Roark Chao – BS/MS student in Electronics & Photonics

In his own words – Interviewed during the 2025 year

Hometown: Claremont, California
Previous Degrees: B.S. in Electrical Engineering
Degree Sought from UCSB: B.S./M.S. in Electrical Engineering, but also technically 1st year Ph.D. in the same field (in lieu of the M.S. exam, I’ll be taking the Ph.D. screening exam. I officially start my doctorate program in the Fall!)
Advisor / Lab or Group Name: Jon Schuller/Schuller Lab & Steven DenBaars/Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC)
ECE Research Area: Electronics and Photonics
Hobbies and Interests: Engrossing myself in meme culture, serenading my eardrums with bass boosted music, maintaining my social media addiction, and wildlife conservation

Roark’s Research

Main Area of Research: Photonics and Plasmonics
Research Interests: 2D Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskites, Artificial Magnetism, Metasurfaces, Nonlinear Optics, Optoelectronics
Important Conferences: I did an outreach talk at Brass Bear Brewery recently! I’m also presenting a talk at the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference this August in San Diego describing my latest work in creating bidirectional LEDs. Before these, I presented a poster at the annual SSLEEC review in 2024.
Important Awards & Honors: SPIE Optics and Photonics Scholarship, Gene and Susan Lucas Undergraduate Research Fund
UCSB Student Organizations: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Photonics Society
Professional Memberships: IEEE, Optica, SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics)
MS Comprehensive Exam & PhD Screening Exam: “Metasurface-Assisted Lasers for Orbital Angular Momentum Manipulation”
Publications: My first 1st author paper was recently published - “Enhancing Magnetic Dipole Emission from 2D Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskites via Mie Resonator Dimers”!
Roark’s Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cQvkgAcAAAAJ&hl=en

Favorite things about

Department: Bothering Erika (the ECE Student Affairs Manager) with random life updates, my labs and the affiliated equipment I have unparalleled access to, and the nanofab (my true home away from home)
UCSB: How collaborative everyone is - my main office is situated next to mechanical and material engineers!
Santa Barbara: Nature is literally a step away (the botanical garden and zoo are pretty nice… I suppose being next to the ocean is also okay)

Roark and his research

Tell us about your research: My research aims to develop methods to overcome conventional limitations of photonic devices, or light-based devices. Since my research is rather broad, I’ll describe the general gist of how I approach each project. First, I start with the theoretical framework behind the idea – thankfully, I have been pushed by Dr. Schuller for over three years so I have the theory down pretty well! Then, I translate the theory to simulations (often finite-difference time-domain, but I sometimes use rigorous coupled-wave analysis) before incorporating some form of machine learning and/or artificial intelligence to inversely design for a figure of merit. Afterward, I grow the materials (typically hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites via precursor solutions or gallium nitride via MOCVD) and then take my material stack into the nanofab to perform a series of steps to turn a crystal into a novel, smaller than light device!

How and why did you get into your area of research?My high school friends encouraged me to turn my childhood Minecraft mods into a real thing. That’s the shortest version of how I got into research. Yes, I learned how to code as a 5th grader to make Minecraft mods – I was inspired by the Aether!

I reached out to Dr. Spencer Smith during my freshman year of undergrad and he allowed me to join his group with the intention of letting me develop a rotating 2-Photon microscope. While it was interesting, I felt I wasn’t as excited as I should be towards a project I’m leading. Thus, I reached out to Dr. Jon Schuller after encouragement from infamous people within the Roark lore. Fortunately, he responded! Dr. Schuller made the great mistake of giving me a project to lead as a 2nd year undergrad (see my Google Scholar for this paper!) Funny enough, this project surprisingly parallels my 5th grade Minecraft mod endeavors.

Why did you select UCSB and ECE in regard to your research? Having worked with Dr. Schuller since my second year of undergrad here at UCSB, I wasn’t new to the scene when I applied to the BS/MS. He and I had a close working relationship already established, so I didn’t see any reason to leave given how incredibly fortunate I am to be able to pursue the research I do at a campus where I can walk for two minutes and bam! I find myself at the MOCVD reactors where I can grow the gallium nitride I need for my ridiculous projects.

What do you find rewarding about your research? I enjoy seeing my co-authors succeed. The idea that I can make a difference to even one person by simply “doing science” is always going to be the most rewarding thing about my research. I seek to develop technologies that allow people to have light at all times, regardless of their economic or physical status.

But don’t get it twisted: I am NOT a science person. I prefer to do more arts-related things (I was a theater kid in high school), but the way I view science is as an extension of art.

Thoughts on working in a group research environment: Working in a group research environment is important, especially when the research is as complicated as the work I do. I don’t think the following string of words is going to make much sense, but nevertheless:

“... so if we look at the nonlinear susceptibility of GaN, we notice there’s a lot of potential for SHG! That means we could simply implement a phased-array metasurface obeying rules governed by time symmetry to unconventionally manipulate the output OAM from an incident Bessel-Gaussian beam!”

Anyways… working in a friendly group environment is highly beneficial because you are working with people who (1) understand what that text string means, (2) are able to give you feedback super fast, and (3) are experts of their own respective elements within the field so you can gather new perspectives!

Equally important is your advisor (or advisors). If your advisor isn’t supportive in at least one way (other than financially), I don’t see it working out without a lot of extra work on your end and that’s a big no-no.

UCSB Prides itself on its collaborative atmosphere, give some examples of how you collaborate: Through my advisors, I find myself interacting with industry folks (Intel, for example) to discuss novel project ideas. Sometimes, I find myself at their labs making measurements!

At UCSB, I’m literally always working with at least two co-authors (shout out to the homies Wesley Mills, Stephen Gee, and Alejandro Quevado) on all my works so collaboration isn’t just expected, but a given.

Academics at UCSB

Strengths of the graduate program: Strong emphasis on generalized topics that appear in many classes (e.g., quantum mechanics). Diverse portfolio of professors to provide unique perspectives.

Favorite course: If it’s an ECE course, it’d be ECE 261 (Nanophotonics) taught by my advisor, Dr. Jon Schuller. I’m under the impression many engineering courses “hand wave” a lot of important details for the sake of “applications!” But Dr. Schuller truly teaches this course from the perspective of detailing the logic behind each and every decision we make in the nanophotonics field. In my published works, I often refer back to Dr. Schuller’s notes!

If it’s from any department, it’d be Physics 210B (Electromagnetism II) taught by Dr. Douglas Eardley. Dr. Eardley’s course was where my understanding of electromagnetism truly developed. I had previously taken the undergraduate ECE and Physics equivalents (ECE 134/144 & Physics 110), but there were a lot of details that I didn’t grasp until this course! For example, Mie resonances weren’t a topic I was intimately familiar with, but, given my first 1st author paper details this topic to an absurd amount, I clearly became quite knowledgeable about this topic after this course!

Describe your Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) and Teaching Assistant (TA) experiences: As a GSR, my duties are to come up with new theoretical frameworks before simulating them (often combined with machine learning and/or artificial intelligence!) and taking my finalized designs into the nanofabrication facility to physically create whatever I came up with. Although you’ll rarely catch me at my desk, my computers are running simulations 24/7! You’ll most likely find me in either Elings brewing up a batch of 2D perovskites, ESB developing some random nanostructures, or anywhere on campus where there’s lab equipment I need to use for some super niche measurement for an even nicher topic within an even nicher field!

As a TA, I have taught ECE 134 (electromagnetism) and 162B (solid-state physics). In 134, I wrote the homework, graded homework/exams, and ran two hour sections. Since this is a foundational course, I approached it in a more serious manner than I usually approach things. I wanted to ensure the students left the course feeling confident they could, at the very least, explain why electrical engineering is dubbed as such despite encompassing so many separate subfields.

In 162B, I graded homework/exams, ran one hour sections, and taught a few lectures (namely on topics like perturbation theory). This course is geared towards graduating seniors in the EE program, so I approached it very differently than I did in 134 (seniors in the program have a lot going on!) Instead of being more serious, I treated the students (many of whom were older than me) the same way I treat my own friends – a light-hearted, friendly environment is much more beneficial for graduating seniors than a serious, not-so-fun environment in my humble opinion!

I enjoy teaching! One of the greatest moments I’ve had as a TA was seeing this brilliant solution to a problem that I had never considered once in my years of research – truly impressive stuff! However, I do find myself investing a little too much time into my students so I’ll be taking a step back from the teaching world until I get to the point where I feel like I’ve done what I wanted to do as a graduate student. Maybe I’ll return as a professor?

Life as a graduate student

Quality of life as a graduate student and how you balance school, work, social, and family life: It’s pretty chill. I wake up, go to the lab, and then I go to sleep! I balance everything by mixing it all together. I don’t lead a life where I can just have a very outdoors-y lifestyle, since I am responsible for way too many things for any 22-year-old to manage, but c’est la vie.

Your mileage will vary and I hope you do more than just work 24/7!

What is your social life like? When I can, I chill with my friends by getting food. That said, I don’t really have time in the year to take a break of more than a few days at most. That’s on me, though, for continuously raising the bar for myself over the past couple of years. After I publish a few more first author works, I’ll be cutting back on the research!

Having said that, I do enjoy the nice weather here – it makes it less miserable to be in a lab from sunrise to sunrise everyday! I lived in IV during undergrad and am currently in the grad apartments with my friends!

Tell us about your summer break: Research and work as an intern (or as an associate electrical engineer, per my recent ventures). This answer applies to every single year I’ve been here at UCSB.

Advice to prospective graduate students: Do NOT commit yourself to a trillion projects. PLEASE go outside and touch grass. Thanks!

Future Plans...

Where will your research take you next and what are your future career goals? This is funny because I’m staying here for my doctorate degree in the same field so I suppose my research will take me to… the same spot I’ve been at. My future career goal is to be a professor – it’d be really, really funny (but also a little sad) if I ended up being a professor here! If I see this article in ten years as I sit in my office in either ESB or E2 writing grants and whatnot… well, hi future me!