Mikhail Belkin received his B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1998 and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. From 2004 to 2008 he worked in Federico Capasso's group in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, first as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a research associate. He joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 2008.

Mikhail Belkin's current research interests include the development of novel quantum cascade lasers, giant optical nonlinearities in semiconductor nanostructures, mid-infrared and THz photonic and plasmonic systems for chemical sensing, and metamaterials in mid-infrared. Several of the recent publications he co-authored have received considerable media coverage, in particular his work on THz semiconductor laser sources based on intra-cavity difference-frequency generation (see MIT Technology Review, Laser Focus World, Science Daily, and others), a millimeter-sized mid-infrared spectrometer for chem/bio sensing (see MIT Technology Review, Photonics Spectra, Science Daily, and others), and THz quantum cascade lasers with record operating temperatures (see Optics.ORG).

Min Jang is currently a Ph.D candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UT Austin. His research interests are in Optoelectronic device fabrication, modeling, and analysis. He is currently working on extending the spectral range of room-temperature quantum cascade lasers to shorter wavelengths (below 3.6 microns). He received his B.S. degrees in System Management Engineering from Sungkyunkwan University and Electrical & Computer Engineering from Kyungwoon University in 1998 and 2002, respectively, and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from UT Austin in 2009.

Feng Lu received his B.S. and M.S. degree in physics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UT-Austin. His research projects include the development of sub-wavelength resolution mid-infrared microscopy using quantum cascade lasers.

Jongwon Lee received his B.S. degree from the Division of Electrical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2009 and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from UT Austin in 2011. He is currently Ph. D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UT Austin. His research projects include the development of meta-materials and widely-tunable optical filters based on Long-range surface plasmon polaritons.

Karun Vijayraghavan received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2008 and his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. His reserach interests are the study of semiconductor physics and optoelectronic devices. He is currently working on the development of novel THz quantum cascade lasers and nonlinear sources in THz.

Yifan Jiang received her B.S. degree in Optoelectronics from Beijing Institute of Technology in 2011. She is currently a master student at in Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UT Austin. Her research interest include optoelectronic devices and semiconductor devices. She is now working on external cavity quantum cascade lasers.

Karthik Choutagunta is currently in his junior year for a Bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin. He is working on building external cavity quantum cascade lasers.