Dr. Tao received her B. S. from the Department of Physics at Peking University in 1997, M. S. from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Arizona State University in 2001 and Ph. D from the Department of Materials Science and Engineer at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. After a postdoctoral research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Tao joined the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science at Brookhaven National Laboratory as a Research Associate in 2007, with promotions to Assitant Physicist (2009), Associate Physicist (2011) and Physicist (2014). She was a recipient of US DOE Early Career Award in 2015 for her work in the area of MeV ultrafast electron diffraction. Dr. Tao is currently a full-time professor at the Department of Physics at University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui, China.

Research Interests

    Taking advantage of unique electron diffraction and versitile transmission electron microscopic (TEM) techniques, Dr. Tao's primary research goal is to explore the intertwined interactions of multiple degrees of freedom (i.e. charge, orbital, spin and lattice) in strongly correlated materials and advanced functional materials and to establish the structure-property relationship in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the structural origin of the materials' functionalities. The two main research fields are as follows: 1. TEM and its application on correlated materials and functional materials; 2. Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) and its exploration of correlated materials and functional materials.