Yao Shen Successfully Defends PhD

On June 05, 2025, WPI researcher Yao Shen successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled “Specialty Fiber Probes for Light-Matter Interactions and Their Applications in Physical, Chemical, and Biomedical Research.”

His research focused on designing and developing miniaturized fiber-based optical systems for advanced sensing and surgical applications. Specifically, Yao’s work included the development of fiber-optical tweezers for micro-particle manipulation, fiber-coupled laser ablation probes for minimally invasive tissue removal, and Raman spectroscopy probes for in-situ chemical and crystallinity characterization. These innovations aim to improve precision sensing in industrial and biomedical research, support food safety monitoring, and enable novel approaches to laser-based therapies.

Yao’s work was supported by NSF, NIH-funded projects, and benefited from collaboration with the Center for Advanced Research in Drying (CARD) from January 2024 to January 2025.

Currently, Dr. Shen is working as an optomechanical engineer specializing in optical metrology systems for next-generation wearable virtual reality devices at Meta.