Zihe Gao

Zihe Gao serves as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Auburn University's College of Engineering since August 2023, following postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania and industry experience at Meta (Facebook Reality Labs).

His academic foundation includes:

• PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2018)
• MS in Physics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2012)
• BS in Physics, Nanjing University (2011)

Dr. Gao's research integrates optics, microelectronics, and physics to develop programmable photonic systems. His work focuses on controlling collective behaviors in multi-element photonic systems for scalable integrated chips, with applications spanning dynamically steerable laser sources and reconfigurable quantum optical platforms. Key methodologies include non-Hermitian physics, topological photonics, and spin-orbit coupling engineering.

Analysis of his 2023-2025 publications reveals dominant trends in non-Hermitian photonic switching, high-dimensional quantum state manipulation, and topological semiconductor laser arrays. His team pioneers lithography-free reconfigurable photonics and spin-orbit microlasers for quantum key distribution, demonstrating strong industry-academia translation from prior Meta work on AR/VR structured-light systems.

His scholarly trajectory shows continuous progression from VCSEL array fundamentals (PhD under Prof. Kent Choquette) to quantum-topological photonics (postdoc with Prof. Liang Feng), now establishing independent research at Auburn with emphasis on integrated quantum-classical hybrid systems.