Every year, the Nature Journal Light: Science and Applications, which focuses on optics and photonics, aims to give recognition to young scientists around the world for their work in optics-related fields. They choose three researchers each in the categories “Faculty Track” and “Before Faculty Track” as the years Rising Stars of Light. The winners are judged on innovation, impact and performance.
This year, Dr. Danqing Wang, a postdoctoral researcher in the Nano-Optics-Division of Director Vahid Sandoghdar at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen has been selected as one of 2023s rising stars. She won the award in the category Before Faculty Track for her research on unconventional optical behaviors of functional and structured nanomaterials with applications in integrated circuits and quantum engineering. Out of seven finalists in her category, Wang found herself among the three winners, as she explained: “The finalists were all brilliant! This award came as a surprise. I feel very honored and glad to have this opportunity and meet many other scientists from around the world who work in diverse aspects of optics, from biology, topology to quantum research.”

Before joining MPL, Dr. Danqing Wang was a Miller research fellow hosted by Junqiao Wu in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. In Erlangen, her research focuses on coupling single-photon emitters to sub-micron plasmonic nanocavities through a recently developed tipless PROScan method for quantum nanophotonics at room temperature.