Early Life and Education
Lu was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester, Pennsylvania. His early childhood interest in rockhounding led to his winning national gold medals in the "Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils" event at four National Science Olympiad tournaments. Lu graduated from B. Reed Henderson high school in West Chester in 1996.
Lu matriculated at Princeton University in September, 1996, and was advised in his first year by geology professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes. He studied organic chemistry with Maitland Jones, Jr., with whom Lu published his first paper on his freshman summer research project about carbenes. As an undergraduate physics major, he wrote his fourth-year senior thesis with Prof. Paul J. Steinhardt on the search for natural quasicrystals, later published in Physical Review Letters. Lu graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with an A.B. in physics from Princeton in June, 2000. In September, 2000, he began his graduate studies at Harvard University, receiving an A. M. in physics in 2002. In 2005, Lu presented a set of lectures in Turkmenistan. Since 2007, Lu has served on the national advisory committee of the Science Olympiad. Lu completed his Ph.D. in physics in 2008.
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