Leo Illing

I am pursuing a bachelor's degree at Santa Clara University with majors in Physics and Math and a minor in Art History.

As a member of Phi Delta Theta, I served as the social chair and am currently the mental health chair. In these positions, I scheduled, communicated, and coordinated twenty 70+ person events. I am actively working towards extending our school's psychological resources to all fraternities on campus.

I am the VP of the Society of Physics Students where I work to foster community while creating opportunities for professional development. Our most successful endeavor has been our weekly Journal Clubs. This entails one student creating a talk off of an article. We also host a variety of outreach events, our most popular being astronomy night. For this, we bring telescopes to the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton.

Over the last year, I have been working in a laser optics lab. I am working with femtosecond titanium sapphire lasers to create a form of spectroscopy that combines the advantages of FTIR and Dual Comb Spectroscopy. I had the opportunity to present my research at the American Physical Society Far West 2023 Meeting and am working towards my first publication.