The Zhao Nano Lab at the University of Georgia is pleased to announce the public release of LinePilot Digitizer (LinePilot), a free, open-source software tool designed to recover numerical data from scientific line plots. LinePilot enables researchers to convert published figures, scanned plots, and other plot images into reusable numerical datasets, facilitating quantitative analysis, data comparison, and machine learning applications. The project was led by graduate student Fengbo Ma, with...

The Zhao Nano Lab is delighted to announce that Amit Kumar successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on October 27, 2026, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Georgia. His dissertation, entitled “From SERS Spectral Variability to Reliable Biosensing: Plasmonic Substrate Physics, Time-Resolved Spectral Dynamics, and Machine Learning,” was completed under the supervision of Prof. Yiping Zhao. Amit's doctoral research focused on understanding the physical origins of...

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book, SmartIPL: Smartphone Based Introductory Physics Labs, by SPIE Press. The book is now available in print and through the SPIE Digital Library. SmartIPL presents an accessible approach to introductory physics laboratory education by using smartphones and the Tracker video-analysis application as versatile experimental tools. Designed for both high school and college students, the book enables learners to investigate fundamental physics...