Lab Members

Principal Investigator

Henry Kapteyn photo.

Henry Kapteyn

kapteyn@jila.colorado.edu | 303-492-8198 | Website

Dr. Henry C. Kapteyn has been a Professor at the Department of Physics and a Fellow of JILA, at the University of Colorado since 1999. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at the University of Michigan, and an Assistant…

headshot of Margaret Murnane.

Margaret Murnane

murnane@jila.colorado.edu | 303-492-7839 | Website | Murnane CV

Dr. Margaret Murnane is a Fellow at JILA and a member of the Department of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado. She received her B.S and M.S. degrees from University College Cork, Ireland, and her Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of California…

Senior Scientist

Michaël Hemmer photo.

Michaël Hemmer

Michael.Hemmer@Colorado.EDU

Michaël graduated with a Masters degree in engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Physique de Marseille (France). He graduated with a PhD in Optics in 2011 from the University of Central Florida working on the development of ultrafast nonlinear amplifiers for high field physics…

Research Associate

Headshot of Shunye Gao

Shunye Gao

Shunye.Gao@colorado.edu

Nicholas Jenkins photo.

Nicholas Jenkins

nije8621@colorado.edu | 303-492-5903

Headshot of Na Li

Na Li

Na.Li-1@colorado.edu

Brendan McBennett photo.

Brendan McBennett

Brendan.Mcbennett@colorado.edu | 303-492-7141

Brendan grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and studied mathematics and German as an undergraduate at UNC Chapel Hill. After spending a year as an exchange student at the University of Ulm in southern Germany, he became interested in renewable energy integration into electric power systems. He…

Graduate Student

Iona Binnie photo.

Iona Binnie

Iona.Binnie@colorado.edu

Iona grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. She received her bachelor's degree in Physics at Williams College, where she conducted research in ultrafast electron diffraction. She joined the KM group in the summer of 2019, and has worked on many projects with the magnetics and imaging teams. She now…

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Emma Burton

emma.burton@colorado.edu

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Theodore Culman

theodore.culman@colorado.edu

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Ivan Dickson

ivan.dickson@colorado.edu

photo of Eric Fang

Haocheng (Eric) Fang

hafa9669@colorado.edu

Eric grew up in Shanghai, China and received his B.S. in Physics and Computer Science at University of California, Los Angeles, during which he developed a generalized model for spin transport in magnetic materials. After joining the group of Dr. Henry Kapteyn and Dr. Margaret Murnane at JILA in…

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Grzegorz Golba

grgo4609@colorado.edu

Anna (Anya) Grafov photo.

Anna (Anya) Grafov

anna.grafov@colorado.edu

Anya grew up in Maryland, and graduated from the University of Maryland with High Honors in Physics in 2020. As an undergraduate, she conducted research on the optical properties of noble-metal nanostructures, and also contributed to projects in plasma physics. Anya began her PhD studies in…

Will Hettel

Will Hettel

will.hettel@colorado.edu | 303-735-7962

Will grew up in Half Moon Bay, California. While pursuing a B.S. in Physics at UC Santa Barbara, he began his optics career as an intern at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. There he studied high-temperature superconductors with optical pump-probe, synchrotron, and…

Headshot of Clay Klein.

Clay Klein

clay.klein@colorado.edu

Clay grew up in southwest Pennsylvania and received a B.S. in Physics with a minor in Mathematics from Clarion University of Pennsylvania in 2022. As an undergraduate, he worked on a variety of research projects including developing aerogels for thermal insulation on high speed aircraft as an…

Headshot of Rae Larson.

Rae Larsen

rachel.larsen-1@colorado.edu

Rae grew up in Arizona and graduated from Arizona State University with a B.S. in physics in 2022. At ASU, Rae became involved in the CXFEL lab and stayed there for a year after graduation working with high power ultrafast lasers. Now Rae works in the KM group at CU boulder developing…

Headshot of Yunhao Li.

Yunhao Li

yunhao.li@colorado.edu

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Jiayi Liu

Jiayi.Liu@colorado.edu

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Emma Nelson

emma.nelson-1@colorado.edu | 303-492-6663

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Richa Sapkota

risa3467@colorado.edu

Headshot of Gabriella Seifert.

Gabriella (Gabi) Seifert

gase3916@colorado.edu

Gabi grew up in Minnesota, and graduated summa cum laude in 2023 from Scripps College, where she studied physics and German. As an undergraduate, she worked in a whole variety of areas of physics—including tracking motility patterns of single-celled organism Stentor coeruleus during regeneration…

Headshot of Yunzhe Shao.

Yunzhe (Oliver) Shao

yunzhe.shao@colorado.edu

Oliver grew up in Shanghai, China. He attended Indian Springs High School in Birmingham, Alabama, where he played on the basketball team. He went on to study Physics and Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is interested in device characterization / metrology using…

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Benjamin Shearer

besh5711@colorado.edu

Headshot of Jeremy Thurston.

Jeremy Thurston

jeremy.thurston@colorado.edu | 303-492-5903

Jeremy grew up in the St. Louis area and received his B.S. in Physics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2018. His undergraduate research with Edward Ackad used numerical models to study interactions of ultrafast EUV lasers with noble gas nanoclusters. He…