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  2. Meet Our Graduate Students

Meet Our Graduate Students

photo of BME graduate studen, Emelina Vienneau Mingze He

Ph.D. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering


"I'm a Vanderbilt engineer because of the research opportunities and interdisciplinary collaborations."

I am a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student. I grew up in China and graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technologies in 2018 with master's and bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering.

I work in Professor Joshua Caldwell's lab at Vanderbilt, and my research focuses on nanophotonics. The general goal of my research is to develop platforms to control the responses of mid-infrared light, such as propagations of phonon polaritons and thermal emitters, which advance our ability to guide light on-chip and design light sources.

I am passionate about numerous topics, including electronic devices, nanophotonics, materials science, mechanical devices, and machine learning. As a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering, I can take courses in different fields. By taking courses, I learn about more than the subject matter of the course—I also learn how professors in different fields teach and think.

Life at Vandy

My advisor is an amazing mentor, and he always encourages us to explore different fields. We work with groups focusing on electronics, photonics, machine learning, and developing new materials. I truly appreciate the collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment. Working and talking with people in different areas helps me “jump out of the circle.”

Walking on the campus is always refreshing for the trees, buildings and squirrels, and I enjoy watching those squirrels eating and jumping around.

Mingze HeFor fun

I love hiking in parks and enjoy Sunday drives. Scenes in different seasons are different but always awesome. I also love the recreation center at Vandy a lot. We have numerous classes (and most of them are free!), including boxing and yoga, and there is even a climbing wall in the rec center. Working out and activities in the rec center help me stay healthy, both physically and mentally.

Selected Publications 

1.      He, Mingze, Da He, Hang Qian, Qi Lin, Daixing Wan, Xiaomin Cheng, Ming Xu, Hao Tong, and Xiangshui Miao. "Ultra-Low Program Current and Multilevel Phase Change Memory for High-Density Storage Achieved by a Low-Current SET Pre-Operation." IEEE Electron Device Letters 40, No. 10 (2019): 1595-1598.

2.      Lee, In-Ho, Mingze He, Xi Zhang, Yujie Luo, Song Liu, James H. Edgar, Ke Wang et al. "Image polaritons in boron nitride for extreme polariton confinement with low losses." Nature Communications 11, No. 1 (2020): 1-8.

 

Learn more about our Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. program.