CLEO/Europe tutorial talks
Andrea Alù, City University of New-York, USA
Title :Nonlocal metasurfaces
Biography :
Andrea Alù is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. He received his Laurea (2001), MS (2003) and PhD (2007) from the University of Roma Tre, and was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor at the University of Texas at Austin until 2018. In 2015 he was the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Visiting Professor at the AMOLF Institute in the Netherlands. His research interests span over applied electromagnetics, nano-optics, polaritonics and acoustics. Alù is credited with a number of discoveries, including the experimental demonstration of a three-dimensional electromagnetic cloak, of nonreciprocal phenomena in magnet-free metamaterials, of electromagnetic time-reflections and of extreme nonlinearities in quantum-engineered metasurfaces.
Dr. Alù is the President of the Metamorphose Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and Metamaterials, the Director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Wave Phenomena Driven by Symmetries and the Chair of the IEEE Joint New York Chapter. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Optical Materials Express, a Simons Investigator in Physics since 2016, a Full Member of URSI, a Life Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Materials Research Society (MRS), Optica, the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and the American Physical Society (APS).
Since 2017, he has been a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Web of Science). He has received several awards and recognitions for his research activities, including the Optica Max Born Award (2024), the SPIE Mozi Award (2024), the IEEE AP-S Distinguished Achievement Award (2023), the Brillouin Medal (2021), the Blavatnik National Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering (2021), the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2020), the DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (2019), the ICO Prize in Optics (2016), the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Engineering (2016), the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award (2015), the Franco Strazzabosco Award for Young Engineers (2013), and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal (2011)
Francesca Ferlaino, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Title : Quantum simulation with long-range-interacting magnetic atoms
Biography :
Francesca Ferlaino is Professor of Physics at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and Research Director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI-Innsbruck) of the ÖAW. She is member of the Board of Directors of the Cluster of Excellence “Quantum Science Austria”.
Her experimental research activity focuses on quantum simulation with quantum gases of strongly magnetic atoms. Ferlaino’s and her group realized in 2012 the first worldwide Bose- Einstein condensate of Erbium and since then she studied exotic quantum phases of matter, including the long-awaited observation of a novel state of matter called supersolid.
Her work has earned her multiple awards, including the prestigious Grand Prix de Physique “Cécile-DeWitt Morette” from the French Academy of Science, the Erwin Schrödinger Prize, the Junior BEC Award, and the Fritz-Kohlrausch Prize for experimental physics, and three ERC grants.
Maria Garcìa Parajo, ICFO-Institute of Photonics Sciences, Spain
Title : Photonic nanoantennas for Biology
Biography :
Maria Garcia-Parajo received her PhD in Physical Electronics in 1993 at Imperial College, London, UK. After postdocs at the L2M-CNRS, Bagneux, FR and U. Twente, NL, she became permanent staff member at the OT group of U. Twente in 1998. In 2005 se moved to Barcelona as ICREA Research Professor, first hosted at the IBEC – Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and since July 2011 at ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences, leading the Single Molecule Biophotonics group. She coordinates several international research projects and has been a member of the executive board of the Spanish Biophysical Society and the International Fluorescence Society. She has received several prestigious awards, including the Advanced grant of the HFSP (2012), Bruker National Prize in Biophysics (2017), Advanced ERC grant 2017 and Emmy Noether Laurate, European Physical Society (2020). Maria is actively involved in (inter)national actions to promote gender equity in Science.
Our research focuses on the development of advanced optical techniques to the study of biological processes at the single molecular level on living cells. We focus on the development and application of different forms of super-resolution microscopy as well as nanophotonic-based approaches to reach spatial resolutions around 10nm on intact cells. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy in ultraconfined volumes, and multi-color single particle tracking are exploited to gain access to dynamic processes down to the microsecond time resolution. Using these combined approaches, we aim at understanding how spatiotemporal compartmentalization of biomolecules inside cells regulates and control cell function. This fundamental question has important implications for health and disease, touching the fields of cell biology and immunology. Most recent research focuses on the fields of nano-mechanobiology at the level of the cell membrane and liquid-liquid phase separation in living nuclei.
Fabio Sciarrino, Università di Roma, La Sapienza, Italy
Title : Integrated photonics for quantum information processing
Biography :
Fabio Sciarrino is Full Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Rome La Sapienza and Senior Research Fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies Sapienza, SSAS. He is Principal Investigator of the Quantum Information Lab, Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome (www.quantumlab.it). His main expertise is experimental quantum optics, computation and quantum information, and foundations of quantum mechanics. In recent years his research activity has focused on the implementation of quantum information protocols via integrated photonic circuits, with particular interest for Boson Sampling, a non-universal computational model with promising characteristics to achieve the quantum supremacy regime.
He is currently coordinator of the European FET Open Project PHOQUSING and has been awarded as principal investigator of ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant QU-BOSS. He is leader of the Spoke “Photonic Platform for Quantum Technologies” of the Italian National Quantum Science and Technology Institute (www.nqsti.iit). Since January 2024 he is the coordinator of European Project EPIQUE (European Photonic Quantum Computer).
Grzergoz Sobon, Wroclaw University of Science & Tech, Poland
Title : Compact Ultrafast Fiber Lasers
Biography :
Grzegorz Soboń received his Ph.D. degree and habilitation in 2013 and 2018, respectively. Since 2019, he has been employed as an associate professor at Wrocław University of Science and Technology, where he leads the Optical Frequency Comb Spectroscopy Group. His research interests are mainly focused on laser technology. He specializes in ultrafast fiber lasers, optical frequency combs, and nonlinear fiber optics. His scientific achievements in these areas include more than 100 papers published in JCR-indexed journals. He has led seven research projects funded by the Polish National Science Centre, the National Centre for Research and Development, the Foundation for Polish Science, and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being a two-time FNP START scholarship holder (2013 with distinction, 2014), ABB Prize laureate, the laureate of the Prime Minister’s Award, and the Minister of Science and Higher Education Award for outstanding achievements in fundamental research.