Zin Lin

Zin Lin is an Assistant Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, based at the Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington. His research focuses on inverse design principles in nanophotonics, computational modeling, and scientific machine learning, with applications in quantum photonics, electromagnetics, and optical imaging. He leads the Inverse Design and Discovery Group, emphasizing large-scale optimization for physical systems and novel device discovery through physics-based AI.

Education: Postdoc in Applied Mathematics at MIT (2018–2022), Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University (2018), and a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Wesleyan University (2012). He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (2014–2018).

Research interests include inverse design of nanophotonic devices, topology optimization, quantum optics, and computational imaging. His group explores cutting-edge topics like metasurface engineering, terahertz wave generation, and bio-chemical sensing through physics-driven optimization frameworks.

Recent work emphasizes scalable optical systems, such as end-to-end optimized metalenses and meta-optics for imaging, as well as quantum control in graphene-based metasurfaces. Key contributions span nonlinear frequency conversion, high-energy particle detection via nanophotonic scintillators, and topology-optimized multi-layered optical systems.

Notable awards include the NSF Graduate Fellowship. His team actively pursues interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of wave physics, machine learning, and high-performance computing, with open positions for PhD students and postdocs.