Studies of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) with hard and electromagnetic probes are a major focus of the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The Heavy Flavor Tracker installed at STAR for runs in 2014-2016 has significantly enhanced the precision of open-heavy-flavor hadron measurements at STAR, while the Muon Telescope Detector has greatly improved muon identification and quarkonia measurements. Recent measurements from STAR on the dependence of jet modifications in heavy-ion collisions on the jet properties and medium geometry provide further insights into the parton energy loss in the QGP. The low $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ di-electron production is sensitive to the initial photon flux in heavy-ion collisions and can be a valuable tool to study the initial conditions in heavy-ion collisions. Some of the recent results from STAR on these and other related measurements, presented at the Hard Probes 2018 conference, are discussed in these proceedings.