Prof. Gu’s research focuses on integrated photonic devices, developing optical components with new materials for optical communication and sensing applications. She investigates the physics of silicon based hybrid nanophotonic devices for low power all-optical switch and high speed on-chip signal processing and sensing applications. ​Her group also develops diffractive optical architecture on integrated photonic platform for advanced all-optical signal processing microsystem. 

Prof. Gu joined the ECE faculty in fall 2016. She received a B.S. with honors in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University. For her Ph.D., she worked on silicon based nanophotonic and optoelectronic devices. She has held positions at the Center for High Technology Materials in the University of New Mexico, Zhejiang University in China, and Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs and Princeton University in NJ. At Bell labs, she worked in Dr. Y. K. Chen’s group on silicon photonic network-on-chip systems. She completed postdoctoral research in the Large-Scale Integrated Photonics research group led by Raymond G. Beausoleil at Hewlett Packard Labs in Palo Alto, CA, studying large-scale nonlinear photonic circuits. She also completed postdoctoral work with Prof. Craig B. Arnold at Princeton University, studying solution processed chalcogenide materials.