Thermal radiation has played an important role in incandescent lamps, solar energy utilization, temperature measurements, materials processing, remote sensing for astronomy and space exploration, combustion and furnace design, food processing, cryogenic engineering, as well as numerous agricultural, health, and military applications. Recent studies have shown that the near-field effects can realize emerging technologies, such as superlens, sub-wavelength light source, polariton-assisted biosensors, and energy conversion devices. Because of the important applications to energy transport and conversion, the study of engineered surfaces with desired thermal radiative characteristics using controlled micro/nanostructures has emerged as a new frontier in thermophysics and radiative transfer research. The objective of our research group is to investigate the fundamental mechanisms of thermal radiation and to design and fabricate suitable micro/nanostructures for emerging technologies such as nanoelectronics, microscale thermophotovoltaic devices, nanothermal manufacturing, surface thermal metrology, and biotechnology. We investigate radiative energy conversion devices for power generation and refrigeration, as well as spectral absorptance of particles for solar energy harvesting.