Faculty

The Photonic Intelligence Laboratory (π-Lab) explores photonic solutions for artificial intelligence with a focus on computer vision, a key technology driving autonomy, robotics, and intelligent systems. We are a multidisciplinary team with backgrounds in optics, computer science, and electrical engineering. By engineering hardware and software together, we co-optimize optics, electronics, and algorithms that enable faster, smarter, and more efficient visual intelligence.

[Curriculum Vitae]

• 2025 – present: Assistant Professor, UNIST, South Korea
• 2022 – 2025: Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Washington, United States
• 2024 – 2024: Visiting Researcher, POSTECH, South Korea
• 2022 – 2022: Postdoctoral Scholar, KAIST, South Korea

[Education]

• 2022: Ph.D., Department of Physics, KAIST
• 2016: B.S., Department of Physics, KAIST

[Research Keywords and Topics]

• Edge Computing
• Optical Neural Network
• Nanophotonics
• Metasurface
• Semiconductor Photonics

[Publications (selected)]

• J. Xiang*, M. Choi*, Y. Zhang, Z. Zhou, A. Majumdar, and E. Shlizerman, “Neural tangent knowledge distillation for optical convolutional networks”, NeurIPS (2025)
• M. Choi and A. Majumdar, “Free-space optical encoder for computer vision”, npj nanophotonics, 2, 36 (2025)
• M. Choi*, J. Xiang*, A. Wirth-Singh, S.-H. Baek, E. Shlizerman, and A. Majumdar, “Transferable polychromatic optical encoder for neural networks”, Nature Communications, 16, 5623 (2025) – Selected as Optics & Photonics News’ “Year in Optics” features.
• M. Choi, A. Alù, and A. Majumdar, “Observation of photonic chiral flatbands”, Physical Review Letters 134, 103801 (2025)
• A. Wirth-Singh*, J. Xiang*, M. Choi*, J. E. Fröch, L. Huang, S. Colburn, E. Shlizerman, and A. Majumdar*, “Compressed meta-optical encoder for image classification”, Advanced Photonics Nexus 4(2), 026009 (2025) – Selected as Optics & Photonics News’ “Year in Optics” features.

[Honors]

• BK21 Representative Thesis Paper
• KAIST Presidential Fellowship (KPF)
• Korea Foundation of Advanced Studies (KFAS)