Optical Frequency Combs Workshop April 2022

Prof. Derryck Reid, Heriot-Watt University

Derryck Reid obtained his MA from the University of Cambridge in 1991 and his PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1994 for thesis work on ultrafast optical parametric oscillators. A fellow of Optica and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he is best known for his invention of ultrafast pulse measurement using two-photon autocorrelation in semiconductor diodes, and his demonstration of the first femtosecond frequency comb based on an OPO.

Prof. Dmitry Skryabin, University of Bath

Dmitry Skryabin is fascinated by how light interacts with matter and enjoy the beauty and power of physics. His research focuses on the physics of ultrashort pulses, multi-mode complexity and frequency conversion in nonlinear photonic devices, e.g., in microresonators, waveguides, optical fibres, and semiconductors. Solitons in optics have always been a particular topic of his interest.

Dr. Sandra de Vega, Menlo System: “Frequency Combs in Quantum Technologies”

– BSc in Physics and MSc in Photonics at Complutense University of Madrid and Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona (Spain)

– PhD in Photonics at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Barcelona (Spain)

– Joined Menlo Systems, Munich (Germany) in March 2020 as International Sales Engineer for Frequency Combs

Dr. Sivaraman Subramanian, University of Exeter

Sivaraman Subramanian received his Ph.D. in Physics from University of Exeter in 2021. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Living Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, UK.  His research is focused on developing a label-free optical biosensing platform based on whispering gallery modes.  His research interests include micro/nanosensors, biophotonics, plasmonics, and light–matter interaction.

Dr. Jonathan Silver, NPL

Jonathan Silver is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, where he heads a team researching microresonator-based frequency combs, or microcombs. He is currently funded by the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Timing to develop integrated self-referenced microcombs for portable optical clocks and radar, in collaboration with the Universities of Glasgow and Southampton. Jonathan joined NPL in 2015 to work with Pascal Del’Haye on optical microresonators and microcombs after completing a PhD in ultracold atoms at the universities of Cambridge and Bonn, Germany. From 2018 to 2020, he held a Royal Academy of Engineering UK Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship hosted by City, University of London, during which time he continued to work at NPL as a Visiting Researcher. He took over the leadership of the team when Pascal moved to Germany in 2019. He grew up in London and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Shuangyou Zhang, Max Planck Institute

Shuangyou Zhang received his Bachelors in Electronics from Jilin University, and PhD in Electronics from Peking University, China. He was Multiply fellow (Marie S.-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships in Photonics) from 2018 to 2020. His research interests include optical frequency combs and their applications, microresonator-based frequency combs, integrated photonics, and chip-scale atomic clock.

Prof. Zhixin Liu, UCL

Zhixin Liu received his PhD degree in Information Engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and joined the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton in 2013. In 2016, he joined the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at UCL as a lecturer and was promoted to associate professor in 2021.
His research interests include optical signal processing and its applications in communication systems and scientific instruments. He has pioneered frequency comb assisted data conversion and low-latency data communications that have led to several world’s first demonstrations. Dr Liu has co-authored more than 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and conferences with several high-profile papers and invited papers in top journals. He holds three patents, with two licenced to industrial companies. Dr Liu has been PI on over 10 grants from Industry and Research Councils. He is Co-I on the £6.1m EPSRC Programme grant TRANSNET.

Prof. Victor Torres Company, Chalmers University

Victor Torres-Company is Professor at the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2). He obtained the PhD from the University of Valencia, Spain in 2008. Before joining Chalmers in 2012 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Photonics Systems group in McGill University, Canada, and later a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Purdue University, USA. He leads the research group Ultrafast Photonics at Chalmers, working on chip-scale frequency comb technology, coherent optical communications and nonlinear silicon photonics. Prof. Torres-Company has co-authored more than 80 papers in leading optics journals and is Associate Editor in Optics Express. He has been awarded twice a Marie Curie Fellowship, was the recipient of a Young Research grant from the Swedish Research Council (VR) in 2013, a European Research Council Consolidator Grant in 2017 and a Consolidator grant from VR in 2020. For his PhD work, he won the Best Thesis award. At Chalmers he is the responsible for the courses Photonic Integration and Advanced Measuring Techniques.

Prof. Camille Brès, EPFL

Camille-Sophie Brès obtained her bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2002 and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, New Jersey in 2007. After a postdoc at the University of California, San Diego, she joined in 2011 the faculty of electrical Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where she is currently an associate Professor leading the Photonic Systems Laboratory. Her research focuses on the engineering of linear and nonlinear photonic waveguiding systems and subsystems for efficient light generation with enhanced functionalities. She is particularly interested in leveraging the maturing and emergence of novel optical platforms to study, enhance and control nonlinear optical effects.

Dr. Wen Zhou, University of Oxford

Wen Zhou received the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow supported by the Hong Kong Postdoctoral Hub—Innovation and Technology Fund from September 2018 to June 2019. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher supported by the EU Horizon 2020 Fun-COMP project in Prof. Harish Bhaskaran’s group at University of Oxford. His research interests include silicon photonics, phase change materials, and in-memory photonic computing. Zhou can be reached by email at wen.zhou@materials.ox.ac.uk.