Applied Physics
From first-principles modeling to device designs.
Our research in this area uses physics to develop new technologies or solve an engineering problem, including optimal design of freeform optics, metamaterials, photonic and solid-state semiconductor devices; the modeling and analysis of electro-magnetic systems and studies on superconductivity and magnets.
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Researchers
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Awards
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AWARD Best Paper Award at SDEMPED 2023 Date: August 30, 2023
Awarded to: Bingnan Wang, Hiroshi Inoue, and Makoto Kanemaru
MERL Contact: Bingnan Wang
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Data Analytics, Multi-Physical ModelingBrief- MERL and Mitsubishi Electric's paper titled “Motor Eccentricity Fault Detection: Physics-Based and Data-Driven Approaches” was awarded one of three best paper awards at the 14th IEEE International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (SDEMPED 2023). MERL Senior Principal Research Scientist Bingnan Wang presented the paper and received the award at the symposium. Co-authors of the paper include Mitsubishi Electric researchers Hiroshi Inoue and Makoto Kanemaru.
SDEMPED was established as the only international symposium entirely devoted to the diagnostics of electrical machines, power electronics and drives. It is now a regular biennial event. The 14th version, SDEMPED 2023 was held in Chania, Greece from August 28th to 31st, 2023.
- MERL and Mitsubishi Electric's paper titled “Motor Eccentricity Fault Detection: Physics-Based and Data-Driven Approaches” was awarded one of three best paper awards at the 14th IEEE International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (SDEMPED 2023). MERL Senior Principal Research Scientist Bingnan Wang presented the paper and received the award at the symposium. Co-authors of the paper include Mitsubishi Electric researchers Hiroshi Inoue and Makoto Kanemaru.
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News & Events
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NEWS MERL Presents Five Papers at IEEE Quantum Week 2026 Date: September 13, 2026 - September 18, 2026
Where: Toronto, Canada
MERL Contact: Toshiaki Koike-Akino
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Optimization, Signal ProcessingBrief- MERL is pleased to announce that five papers have been accepted to the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), also known as IEEE Quantum Week 2026, held September 13–18, 2026, in Toronto, Canada.
The papers highlight MERL’s recent advances in quantum computing, spanning hardware-efficient quantum state preparation, quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) code design, graph-cover-based code construction, machine-learning-assisted code search, and reinforcement-learning-guided quantum error correction. Together, these works address important challenges toward more efficient and reliable quantum computing systems.
The five papers are:
- “Near-Lower-Bound Approximate Quantum State Preparation with Hardware-Efficient Circuits” — Toshiaki Koike-Akino (TR2026-131)
- “Reinforcement-Learning-Guided Multi-Branch Decoding of Quantum LDPC Codes” — Vahid Nourozi, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, and David Mitchell (TR2026-130)
- “Q-Learning Base Search Voltage-Labeled Covers for Weight-Six Bivariate-Bicycle Quantum LDPC Codes” — Vahid Nourozi, David Mitchell, and Toshiaki Koike-Akino (TR2026-132)
- “Collision-Voltage Design of Directional Covers for Bivariate Bicycle Quantum LDPC Codes” — Vahid Nourozi, David Mitchell, and Toshiaki Koike-Akino (TR2026-133)
- “Base-Preserving APM/Voltage Lifts of Bivariate Bicycle Quantum LDPC Codes” — Vahid Nourozi, David Mitchell, and Toshiaki Koike-Akino (TR2026-129)
- MERL is pleased to announce that five papers have been accepted to the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), also known as IEEE Quantum Week 2026, held September 13–18, 2026, in Toronto, Canada.
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TALK [MERL Seminar Series 2023] Prof. Faruque Hasan presents talk titled A Process Systems Engineering Perspective on Carbon Capture: Key Challenges and Opportunities Date & Time: Tuesday, September 19, 2023; 1:00 PM
Speaker: Faruque Hasan, Texas A&M University
MERL Host: Scott A. Bortoff
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, OptimizationAbstract
Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is a promising pathway to decarbonize fossil-based power and industrial sectors and is a bridging technology for a sustainable transition to a net-zero emission energy future. This talk aims to provide an overview of design and optimization of CCUS systems. I will also attempt to give a brief perspective on emerging interests in process systems engineering research (e.g., systems integration, multiscale modeling, strategic planning, and optimization under uncertainty). The purpose is not to cover all aspects of PSE research for CCUS but rather to foster discussion by presenting some plausible future directions and ideas.
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Openings
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ST0175: Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Quantum Technologies
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SA0297: Postdoctoral Research Fellow - AI for Science
See All Openings at MERL -
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Recent Publications
- , "Compressed-Sensing Approach to Magnetic-Flux Map Acquisition with Experimental Validation", International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM), September 2026.BibTeX TR2026-120 PDF
- @inproceedings{Patkar2026sep,
- author = {Patkar, Abhishek and Wang, Yebin and Goldsmith, Abraham and Liu, Dehong and Youcef-Toumi, Kamal},
- title = {{Compressed-Sensing Approach to Magnetic-Flux Map Acquisition with Experimental Validation}},
- booktitle = {International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM)},
- year = 2026,
- month = sep,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-120}
- }
- , "Effect of Coil Geometry on Sensitivity Distribution in Field-Free Line Magnetic Particle Imaging", Scientific Report, August 2026.BibTeX TR2026-115 PDF
- @article{Washino2026aug,
- author = {Washino, Masaomi and Lin, Chungwei and Matsuda, Tetsuya and Seino, Satoshi and Nakagawa, Takashi and Kiwa, Toshihiko},
- title = {{Effect of Coil Geometry on Sensitivity Distribution in Field-Free Line Magnetic Particle Imaging}},
- journal = {Scientific Report},
- year = 2026,
- month = aug,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-115}
- }
- , "Single View Camera-Based Dynamic Airflow Sensing", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP55912.2026.11463737, May 2026, pp. 11542-11546.BibTeX TR2026-038 PDF
- @inproceedings{Tandi2026may,
- author = {Tandi, Kevin and Ali, Wael H. and Rapp, Joshua and Mansour, Hassan},
- title = {{Single View Camera-Based Dynamic Airflow Sensing}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
- year = 2026,
- pages = {11542--11546},
- month = may,
- publisher = {IEEE},
- doi = {10.1109/ICASSP55912.2026.11463737},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-038}
- }
- , "Physics-Informed Deep B-Spline Networks", International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) Workshop on AI and Partial Differential Equations (AI&PDE), April 2026.BibTeX TR2026-046 PDF
- @inproceedings{Wang2026apr3,
- author = {Wang, Zhuoyuan and Romagnoli, Raffaele and Mowlavi, Saviz and Nakahira, Yorie},
- title = {{Physics-Informed Deep B-Spline Networks}},
- booktitle = {International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) Workshop on AI and Partial Differential Equations (AI\&PDE)},
- year = 2026,
- month = apr,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-046}
- }
- , "Quantum-enhanced sensing of time-varying signals at the nanometer scale", SPIE Photonics West, Shahriar, S. M., Eds., DOI: 10.1117/12.3079847, March 2026, vol. 13920, pp. 139200I.BibTeX TR2026-037 PDF
- @inproceedings{Lualdi2026mar,
- author = {Lualdi, Colin and Rapp, Joshua and Kwiat, Paul},
- title = {{Quantum-enhanced sensing of time-varying signals at the nanometer scale}},
- booktitle = {Proc. SPIE Quantum Sensing, Imaging, and Precision Metrology IV},
- year = 2026,
- editor = {Shahriar, S. M.},
- volume = 13920,
- pages = {139200I},
- month = mar,
- publisher = {SPIE},
- doi = {10.1117/12.3079847},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-037}
- }
- , "Application of Optimal Control to Time-Resolution Protocol for Quantum Sensing", Physical Review, DOI: 10.1103/1nsd-2574, Vol. 112, pp. 052608, November 2025.BibTeX TR2025-161 PDF
- @article{Lin2025nov,
- author = {Lin, Chungwei and Ding, Qi (Andy) and Ma, Yanting},
- title = {{Application of Optimal Control to Time-Resolution Protocol for Quantum Sensing}},
- journal = {Physical Review},
- year = 2025,
- volume = 112,
- pages = 052608,
- month = nov,
- doi = {10.1103/1nsd-2574},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-161}
- }
- , "Deep Generalized Canonical Correlation Analysis for Motor Fault Diagnosis", 2025 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IAS), DOI: 10.1109/IAS62731.2025.11061634, June 2025.BibTeX TR2025-085 PDF
- @inproceedings{Guo2025jun2,
- author = {Guo, Peikun and Liu, Dehong and Wang, Bingnan and Wang, Yebin and Inoue, Hiroshi and Kanemaru, Makoto},
- title = {{Deep Generalized Canonical Correlation Analysis for Motor Fault Diagnosis}},
- booktitle = {2025 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (IAS)},
- year = 2025,
- month = jun,
- doi = {10.1109/IAS62731.2025.11061634},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-085}
- }
- , "Pulse Design of Baseband Flux Control for Adiabatic Controlled-Phase Gates in Superconducting Circuits", Physical Review Applied, DOI: 10.1103/yskp-mfcr, Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 064013, June 2025.BibTeX TR2025-070 PDF
- @article{Ding2025jun,
- author = {Ding, Qi and Oppenheim, Alan V. and Boufounos, Petros T. and Gustavsson, Simon and Grover, Jeffrey A. and Baran, Thomas A. and Oliver, William D.},
- title = {{Pulse Design of Baseband Flux Control for Adiabatic Controlled-Phase Gates in Superconducting Circuits}},
- journal = {Physical Review Applied},
- year = 2025,
- volume = 23,
- number = 6,
- pages = 064013,
- month = jun,
- doi = {10.1103/yskp-mfcr},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-070}
- }
- , "Compressed-Sensing Approach to Magnetic-Flux Map Acquisition with Experimental Validation", International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM), September 2026.
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