Last year at UCLA, in pictures

Last time I posted a life update was at the end of my third year. Almost year has past since then. In one and a half months (mid-June) I'll be graduating from UCLA and starting to pursue a graduate degree. More words on that later, pictures first.

Here are some pictures to highlight some of the events that occurred between last summer and now:


I spend a summer working with a group at UC Berkeley. This is the state of mess with which I leave the lab :

 p.s. I was pleased to hear from group members months later that this junk-looking pile actually works for the experiment. yay!


Learning to skate on ice for the first time with an old friend:

Meeting (very briefly) with the mayor of SF while I was at Berkeley during summer:

The 5th (?) Bay Area Cold Atom Meeting (BACAM) at Stanford:

First meal upon returning to LA--Guilin noodles! (tasted not at all authentic, though. But I keep coming back...)

HOME  SWEET HOME! Nothing beats home-cooked food:

Senior year begins! New living situation at UCLA in a house-style apartment room:

Proud product of lab clean-up:

Hanging out in a cooler lab:

Fine...time to build up my own project from scratch:

Saying goodbye to our beloved LEADS program director, Dr. Horton, and presenting her with a certification for her awesomeness:

Thanksgiving break. Baking cookies with mom (or watching her bake...):

Lunch with with Raj who is now at UCSB:

Winter break. Some exercises!

Spending Christmas in SF:

Overlooking the city on house deck, under a bight and full moon

Cool water creatures in SF Science Center

At SF Science Center. Looks like view in Teletubbies!

Fisherman's Wharf

Xmas eve hot pot. 

Museum of Computing History. The display "100 Years of Computing" was so amazing!

Visiting a Caltech lab (a collaborator of our project) to end the break:

My desk getting messy:

The horrible 18L experience:

Measuring the radius of this electron beam

One of the more pleasant labs. Observing and measuring the spectral lines of different gases

Project continues slowly...Installed new colorful LEDs which instantly make the whole table cooler:

Outreach at an elementary school, theme is to explore electric charges:

Getting roasted by math at group meeting, as usual:

Putting together a beast-y computer!

Spending much effort to get this expensive guy to work...

Making my firsts radio with 18L lab partner!

Attending my last Koret symposium at UC Santa Cruz! 

The forest of Santa Cruz!

Grad school visitation & Spring break:

Back to SB!

Familiar scenery

Grant and I sneaking into Chem open house...

Familiar street at Berkeley. See that architecture in the picture? That is a bar, and I had quite an experience there a day before open house...  

That's the mess I make over the summer! Thanks to Eli to integrated it into the experiment!

Streets in Cambridge

A corner of Harvard campus.

Colorado. Driving from Denver to Boulder

Boulder campus is very boulder-y.

Touring NIST!

Touring JILA, which is is much smaller than I thought.

Hiking in Boulder. 

A creek that runs through the town

Downtown Boulder.

Last night/in Boulder!

Red Rock Amphitheater at Denver.

Last quarter!

Project carries on:

New computer in the cave. The smell fresh out-of-the-box electronics filling the room:

When you want to play guitar in lab but don't want to take off your glove:

 Getting crushed by D'Hoker's class...

Acquiring our first real signal (fluorescence)!

The aftermath--layer of dark Yb atoms on the substrate (dark spots are indium):

Joe Bruin comes to take graduate pictures with me :)

Giving a poster presentation and representing UCLA in Washington D.C.:

The secret weapon created by my PI.

Meeting with congressmen and their staffer

Presenting at the Capitol. Well, more precisely, in House of Representatives (Rayburn House).

TBC.