Undergraduate Students

As an undergraduate student, I was particularly adept at pestering my research mentors for research problems. It appears that life does indeed have a way of returning one's mischiefs. Below are short descriptions of some of the brilliant (past and present) undergraduate students that I have had the pleasure of co-supervising.
Past Students
David Ramirez, MIT (2009–2011): David (right) was a bright and talented undergraduate student in the MIT physics department and is currently a graduate student at Stanford University. He was the first undergraduate student I supervised, under the supervision of Marin Soljacic and Steven G. Johnson at MIT. David's research involved the analysis of four-wave mixing in triply-resonant nonlinear cavities and led to a publication in the journal Physical Review A. David is a science fiction fanatic, wears green shoes, and plays a mean gueetar.

Jaime Varela, MIT (2010–2011): I met the talented Mr. Jaime (left) in 2008 and had the pleasure of being his compadre at the 2009 NSBP/NSHP conference. A year later, he decided to join me in the battle against the dark and mysterious Casimir forces. Jaime's work, supervised by Steven G. Johnson, involved an examination of the suspension properties of nano-particle diclusters induced by Casimir forces. Jaime was such a brilliant padawan that his research efforts led to a first author publication in the journal Physical Review A within a year of joining the group. Jaime is currently a graduate student at UC Berkeley.

David and Jaime were both recipients of the 2011 MIT Phillip Morse Memorial Award, given every year to one or two senior(s) with high academic standing and who plan to pursue graduate studies in physics. They both were my teaching assistants for the 2009 and 2011 MITES Advanced Physics course, of which I was an instructor, and were instrumental in the development of the entire curriculum: gracias amigos!


Current Students
Thomal Alcorn, MIT (2011–Present): Thomas is a sophomore in the Physics Department at MIT who I met through Steven G. Johnson, and is currently investigating the possible design space for achieving efficient degenerate four-wave mixing in triply-resonant PhC microcavities.

Rolando LaPlaca, Harvard (2011–Present): Rolando, who I met through Jorge Perez (below), is a sophomore in the Physics Department at Harvard University. He is currently working on a project that involves the development of discrete adiabatic theorems with applications to nanophotonics.

Jorge Perez, MIT (2011–Present): Jorge is a sophomore in the Physics Department at MIT, and is currently working on a number of projects involving the design and exploration of repulsive Casimir forces between nanostructured surfaces.