Hui Cao (曹蕙) is a Chinese American physicist who is the Professor of Applied Physics, a Professor of Physics and a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale University. Her research interests are mesoscopic physics, complex photonic materials and devices, with a focus on non-conventional lasers and their unique applications. She is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Early life and education Cao became interested in physics as a young child, when her father, a professor of physics at Peking University, asked her what travels furthest and fastest. When she learned that the answer was light, she became fascinated by the discipline of optics. Cao earned her undergraduate degree in physics at Peking University. She moved to the United States for her graduate studies, where she joined Princeton University as a graduate student in mechanical & aerospace engineering. She enjoyed the focus of the United States' training on independent, inquisitive thinking. After completing her master's degree, Cao joined Stanford University as a PhD student in applied physics. At Stanford she worked on semiconductor cavity quantum electrodynamics with Yamamoto Yoshihisa. Her doctoral research was published as a monograph by Springer Publishing. She and co-workers proposed a novel exciton-polariton light-emitting diode. Research and career After receiving her PhD degree from Stanford University in 1997, Cao joined the physics faculty at Northwestern University. Whilst she was still interested in quantum electrodynamics, she started to explore new research area and launched a collaboration with Robert P. H. Chang studying the optical properties of zinc oxide. At the time, people were interested in creating ultraviolet lasers out of zinc oxide, but struggled to make a laser cavity with zinc oxide which is difficult to cleave or etch. Whilst measuring the fluorescence of polycrystalline zinc oxide films, Cao observed lasing; an unexpected result given the absence of any cavity. She later attributed this lasing to the random scattering of light from the zinc oxide grains. Cao switched her research focus to random lasers - the lasers with feedback provided by multiple scattering events. Cao also employed the interference of multiply scattered light as a novel mechanism for three-dimensional optical confinement and fabricated microlasers with ZnO nanoparticles. Since 2008, Cao served as the American Physical Society Division of Laser Science Distinguished Traveling Lecturers. In 2008 Cao joined Yale University as a Professor of Applied Physics