news

Yiyi Zhu and Jacob Lepley have joined the group!

May 6, 2025

Welcome to the group, Yiyi Zhu and Jacob Lepley! Yiyi is a junior undergraduate majoring in Physics and Mathematics. He has conducted research on the Gromov hyperbolicity of the fine arc graph in the University of Michigan Lab of Geometry and worked on improving methods for detecting continuous gravitational waves, and will be supported by the Department of Physics to work on beam shutters and other optical system components. Jacob is a senior majoring in ECE and minoring in Physics, and has previously worked in the Thornton and Burgers groups at the University of Michigan, including a project developing a cesium spectroscopic lock. He will be supported by the Quantum Research Institute to develop and build current coils and controllers for magnetic field control in magneto-optical traps. We are very happy to be working with both of them for the summer!

Liam Daly has joined the group!

May 1, 2025

Liam Daly has taken on the challenge of being the first graduate student in the new group! Liam just finished his first year as a graduate student in the University of Michigan Physics Department. He previously earned a B.A> in Physics from the University of North Texas, where he worked in the lab of Jens Neu on THz-Time Domain Spectroscopy. In 2023, he participated in the University of Michigan’s NSF REU program, working with Rachel Goldman’s group on simulations of carrier concentration in submonolayer quantum dots. We couldn’t be more excited to have him on board!

Hsu Ting Tung has joined the group!

March 15, 2025

Hsu Ting has joined the group- welcome! Hsu Ting is an undergraduate between sophomore and junior years, majoring in physics and minoring in CS. Hsu Ting is working on building voltage controllers and PID loops for control over various optical frequency locks.

We're officially here at the University of Michigan! Now recruiting students+postdocs!

January 1, 2025

The lab at the University of Michigan has officially kicked off as of Jan 1 2025! Lab renovations are underway, we have a temporary lab space, and we are recruiting graduate and undergraduate students as well as postdocs. You can find a summary of our current research interests here.

If you are interested in joining the group, you can find more resources here! But more explicitly:

• If you are a graduate student interested in experimental atomic physics and particularly interested in building up a new lab from scratch, please apply to the University of Michigan Department of Physics graduate program!
• If you are a postdoc interested in joining the group, please email Shankari about possible positions- I’d love to invite you out to give a talk and get to know the lab and department.
• If you are an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor or from a different institution, there are various forms of funding and many, many research projects available in the lab, ranging in length from a few months to a couple of years. Please email Shankari for more information.