Rate My Professor Nooshin Estakhri

Nooshin M. Estakhri is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department of the Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University, with an affiliate appointment in the Physics department of the Schmid College of Science and Technology. She is also a member of the Institute for Quantum Studies and leads the Laboratory of Quantum and Optical Engineering. Estakhri joined Chapman University in August 2023 following her postdoctoral associate position in the Department of Physics at Virginia Tech in 2023, where she worked with Professors Sophia Economou and Ed Barnes. She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Optics and Photonics, from the University of Michigan in 2021 under the mentorship of Professor Ted Norris. Prior to her doctoral studies, she received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Communications from the University of Tehran, where she ranked first among graduate engineering students.

Estakhri's research spans quantum optics, quantum information sciences, ultrafast optics, metamaterials and metasurfaces, and scattering phenomena. Her work explores quantum control protocols for quantum processors such as quantum dot spin qubits and superconducting systems, as well as the interactions of classical and quantum light states with disordered media and engineered surfaces for applications in quantum metrology, tomography, microscopy, circuit and network design, absorption and scattering of nanoparticles, and electromagnetic self-duality. Notable publications include "Long-distance photon-mediated and short-distance entangling gates in three-qubit quantum dot spin systems" in Physical Review Research (2024, Editors' Suggestion), "Region-specified inverse design of absorption and scattering in nanoparticles by using machine learning" in Journal of Physics: Photonics (2023), "Emergence of coherent backscattering from sparse and finite disordered media" in Scientific Reports (2022), "Tunable quantum two-photon interference with reconfigurable metasurfaces using phase-change materials" in Optics Express (2021), and "Controlling Light Transmission Through Highly Scattering Media Using Semi-Definite Programming as a Phase Retrieval Computation Method" in Scientific Reports (2017). She has received the Helen Wu Award from Rackham Graduate School (2019), O+P 2019 MKS Instruments Research Excellence Award, Rising Star in EECS recognition (2019), and University of Tehran top graduate honors (2014). Estakhri has presented invited talks and papers at conferences such as SPIE Optics+Photonics, Metamaterials, APS March Meeting, and Gordon Research Conferences, and teaches the first Quantum Technologies course at Chapman's engineering school.