Liang-Yan Hsu
I grew up in Hualien city on the east coast of Taiwan. During high school, I became interested in mathematics, physics, and chemistry and thought about whether humans could understand chemistry from the perspective of physics and mathematics. At that time, inspired by several popular science books and Prof. John Pople’s work, I learned about the field of theoretical chemistry as well as physical chemistry, and I was determined to become a theoretical chemist. As a result, I chose to major in chemistry and minor in physics at National Taiwan University (NTU). At NTU, I knew a lot of like-minded friends in science and started my undergraduate research with Prof. Bih-Yaw Jin, Prof. Robert Silbey’s PhD student. In this stage, I started to study electron transport through molecular systems and focused on three directions: “electron transport through the smallest electric wires” (JPC C 2008, AngewChem 2015), “tunneling with destructive quantum interference” (CPL 2008, CP 2009) and “vibronic couplings in electron transport” (JCP 2010).
After my undergraduate and Master’s study at NTU, I moved to Princeton University and pursued doctoral studies in the department of chemistry (2010-2015) under the guidance of Prof. Herschel Rabitz. In this stage, I worked on a variety of topics in the field of molecular electronics including “light-driven electron transport through nanoscale systems” (PRL 2012, JCP 2014, PRB 2015, PCCP 2015), “single-molecule electric machines” (Nano Letters 2013, JPC C 2015), “the conduction mechanism transition from tunneling to thermally activated hopping” (JPCL 2014), and “intramolecular circuits” (JACS 2014, JACS 2015). In addition to molecular electronics, I was also interested in high-order harmonics generation and signal processing (time-frequency analysis). I collaborated with Prof. Hau-Tieng Wu (University of Toronto) as well as Dr. Yaelin Sheu and finished several works (AIP Advance 2014, Optics Express 2015). After my PhD study, I continued working with Prof. Rabitz as a postdoctoral research associate until the summer of 2016 when I came to Northwestern University.
I am currently pursuing postdoctoral research with Prof. George Schatz. I am involved in theoretical studies of exciton transport and plasmonics and their applications in spectroscopy.