Steven Gomez Alvarado
Postdoctoral Associate, Physics and Astronomy
Steven (he/him), is from Los Angeles, CA, and obtained his Ph.D. in Materials in 2025 from the University of California, Santa Barbara under Prof. Stephen Wilson. Prior to arriving at UCSB, he completed his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at UCLA, where he concurrently interned in the Advanced Thermoelectric Materials Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He is interested in using X-ray and neutron scattering techniques to interrogate novel electronic and magnetic phase behaviors in quantum materials, as well as developing cutting edge synthesis tools for generating high quality single crystals.
Zhaoyu Liu
Zhaoyu received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Physics, CAS (Beijing). He previously worked at the University of Washington. He is a specialist in probing quantum materials from 3D to 2D using a wide range of cryogenic strain techniques.
Zheng Ren
Department of Physics and Astronomy | BRK 251
Ph.D. in Physics, Boston College 2022 | B.S. in Physics, University of Science and Technology of China 2015
Dr. Zheng Ren is a postdoctoral associate and a Junior Fellow of the Rice Academy of Fellows, working with Prof. Ming Yi. His research focuses on emergent phenomena in quantum materials, utilizing his experimental expertise in molecular beam epitaxy thin film synthesis and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
Shouvik Sur
Postdoctoral Associate, Physics and Astronomy
Yaofeng Xie
Yaofeng received his Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University. His research focuses on experimental condensed matter physics, employing a wide range of neutron-scattering techniques to investigate quantum magnetism, superconductivity, and topological materials. He is also interested in exploring novel quantum phases and collective behaviors in correlated electron systems under external tuning parameters such as strain and magnetic fields.
Weiliang Yao