Professor Zhao’s research group focuses on discovering and understanding novel electronic phases hosted in the broad class of quantum materials. Over the past few decades, two central threads in quantum materials research are correlated electron physics and spin-orbit physics, with examples of high-Tc superconductors and topological insulators respectively. In more recent years, new interests have developed in systems that combine these two main streams above – electron correlations and spin-orbit coupling interplay at comparable energy scales within one system, potentially leading to totally new electronic phases of matter. In our group, we develop femtosecond laser based techniques, including nonlinear optical spectroscopy/microscopy and ultrafast optical spectroscopy/microscopy, to explore these novel electronic phases with symmetry, time, spectral and spatial resolutions.