Quansan Yang

Quansan was a postdoctoral researcher in both the Boyden and So labs at MIT. He received a B.Eng. degree in the Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Aerospace, at Tsinghua University (2016), and completed his Ph.D. studies in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University (2021) under the supervision of Prof. John A. Rogers. During his doctoral studies, he developed technologies for eco/bioresorbable electronic systems and associated sustainable manufacturing strategies. In the Synthetic Neurobiology group, Quansan developed technologies based on implosion fabrication to explore, understand, and create novel reaction environments for chemicals, materials, electronics, and photonics. He then moved on to a faculty job at U Washington.

Publications

Three-dimensional nanophotonics with spatially modulated optical properties

Light: Science & Applications | 2026

Salamin Y, Yang G, Mills B, Grossi Fonseca A, Roques-Carmes C, Yang Q, Beroz J, Kooi SE, de Miguel Comella M, Mak K, Vaidya S, Oran D, Swain C, Sun Y, Maayani S, Sloan J, Amin Elfadil Elawad A, Lopez JJ, Boyden ES, Soljačić M (2026) Three-dimensional nanophotonics with spatially modulated optical properties, Light Science and Applications 15(1):145.

QuATON: quantization aware training of optical neurons

Optics Express | 2026

Kariyawasam H, Hettiarachchi R, Yang Q, Matlock A, Nambara T, Kusaka H, Kunai Y, So PTC, Boyden ES, Wadduwage DN (2026) QuATON: quantization aware training of optical neurons, Optics Express 34(1):1-14.