Dr. Lin is an experimental condensed matter physicist and materials scientist. He earned his PhD degree in applied physics from Columbia University in 2019. From 2019 to 2023, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2023, he accepted a faculty position in the physics department at the University of Alabama.

Dr. Yi Lin focuses on studying the behavior of electrons in the equilibrium or excited phases of materials. He directly visualizes the electronic band structure of materials using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). He combines strong laser pulses with pump-probe techniques to induce ultrafast, light-driven, and metastable phases in materials with exotic dimensionality, topology, conductivity, and order. His research has an overarching mission: to discover new materials and reveal hidden modes of light-matter interactions, aiming to guide next-generation energy-harvesting, optoelectronic, and sensing devices.

For his group at UA, he seeks to synergize both in-house facilities and user facilities at national labs to conduct interdisciplinary research. This includes developing photonics-integrated photoemission spectroscopy (π-ARPES) to explore strong light-matter interactions, investigating light-switchable materials and mechanisms to achieve ultrafast sensing and communication, and fabricating optically activable periodic defects in 2D materials to advance quantum science and technology.