Principal investigator

​Mengkun Liu began his physics education in Fudan University in 2002, where he studied electromagnetic theory with Prof. Zhifang Lin during his undergraduate thesis project (PRE, OE 2005). He left Fudan with a BA in physics in 2006 and began his PhD studies at Boston University where he had the pleasure to work with Prof. Richard D. Averitt. His thesis research (PhD 2012) demonstrated it is possible to use strong THz field to induced insulator to metal phase transitions in quantum materials (Nature 2012) (Prof. Averitt is now at UC San Diego).

In fall 2012, Mengkun joined Prof. D. N. Basov's lab at UC San Diego where he obtained enormous experience on infrared and s-SNOM techniques (ROPP 2017, Advanced Materials 2020, Nature Review Materials 2025) . (Prof. Basov is now at Columbia University.)
In 2015,  Mengkun Liu has been appointed as an assistant professor at Stony Brook University in the Department of  Physics and Astronomy.
Since Oct.1 2019, Mengkun Liu has a joint appointment at NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Since  Oct.1 2020 Mengkun Liu has been appointed as Associate Professor in Physics at SBU.

Since March.1 2025 Mengkun Liu has been appointed as Professor in Physics at SBU.