Hongyan (May) Mei, a recent PhD graduate and current postdoctoral scholar in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been awarded a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellowship. The highly competitive and prestigious national program supports “brilliant minds” who pursue innovative, interdisciplinary science.
Mei completed her PhD with Mikhail Kats, the Jack St. Clair Kilby and Antoine-Bascom Professor in ECE, in summer 2024. She’s currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Kats Research Group.
The Schmidt Science Fellowship emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to solving the biggest challenges facing society. Fellows must pivot from what they studied during their PhD program and are supported through mentorship, connections, and additional training to become the next generation of scientific leaders.
As a PhD student, Mei developed a new method for characterizing different materials using infrared spectroscopy. She played a leading role in a large, multi-university team that led to shattering the word record for optical birefringence in a crystal. The phenomenon she discovered results in the speed of light inside a certain crystal being different by a factor of two depending on the polarization of light.
When asked what led her to study these materials and their optical properties, Mei says it was “all out of curiosity.”
“Getting to know new materials is very interesting,” she says. Plus, she added, there are many practical applications, such as more compact and miniaturized infrared imagers and other sensors.
Mei spoke about how she has grown as a researcher since she first came to UW–Madison in 2018. One mindset that she said Professor Kats helped her embrace is that research is a marathon, not a sprint.
“For doing good research, and especially impactful research, it takes time,” Mei says. “Take your time to learn and fail. Don’t be afraid of failing. It happens.”
As a member of the Kats Group, Mei was able to both lead and contribute to many different research efforts, spanning from materials science to physics to nanoscience. Throughout her PhD work she also collaborated with teams across a number of UW-Madison departments, and externally with several institutions around the country and world.
“These are also really important experiences for me because a lot of projects, especially a big or impactful research project, they need teamwork,” Mei says. “It’s wise and important to leverage the expertise from different people, so I really appreciate the collaborations on campus and outside campus.”
Kats said that Mei has been a leader and community-builder during her time in Madison, serving as a mentor to “a generation of graduate and undergrad students in my group.”
“May was a remarkable PhD student along many dimensions: she is an excellent scientist, great mentor to other students, invaluable manager of our laboratory, and a popular collaborator both within and outside of UW–Madison,” Kats says. “I am thrilled that she has been awarded the Schmidt Fellowship, which will give her an opportunity to learn and contribute to another research field, essentially in any research group and university she chooses. I will miss working with her, but can’t wait to see what she does next.”
The Schmidt Science Fellowship encourages high-risk, high-reward research. Mei’s proposed area of research as a fellow involves developing a better infrared spectroscopy system by using quantum entangled photon pairs – one photon in visible, one photon in infrared – to create more sensitive and precise measurement tools. The proposed project combines her knowledge of the challenges of infrared spectroscopy with her interests like quantum mechanics to ultimately improve spectroscopy systems.
Although she proposed a specific research project as part of her application for the fellowship, Mei says the funders are investing in fellows as scientists who can be trailblazers, pioneers, and risk-takers with an ambition to make the world better, rather than the project alone.
“It gives you a lot of freedom to explore things, and it encourages you to do things out of your comfort zone,” Mei said. “You can combine your current knowledge and also your proposed area to create something that can be more impactful and can help to solve global challenges.”
A version of this press release was originally published by the UW-Madison Graduate School.