FreQomb: Optical Frequency Combs Workshop 2025

Prof Kerry Vahala. Caltech, USA.
Microcomb dispersion control for high-performance microwave signal generation

Bio:
Kerry Vahala has pioneered nonlinear optics in high-Q optical micro resonators. His research group has launched many of the areas of study in this field and invented optical resonators that hold the record for highest optical Q on a semiconductor chip. Vahala has applied these devices to a wide range of nonlinear phenomena and applications. This includes the first demonstration of parametric oscillation and cascaded four-wave mixing in a micro cavity – the central regeneration mechanisms for frequency micro combs; electro-optical frequency division – used in the most stable commercial K-band oscillators; and the first observation of dynamic back action in cavity optomechanical systems. His micro-resonator devices are used at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in chip-based optical clocks and frequency synthesizers. They have also been used at the Keck II observatory in Hawaii as miniature astrocombs in the search for exoplanets. Vahala’s current research is focused on the application of high-Q optical micro resonators to miniature precision metrology systems as well as monolithic optical gyroscopes. Professor Vahala was also involved in the early effort to develop quantum-well lasers for optical communications. That work formed the basis for nearly all of today’s high-speed semiconductor laser design for lightwave high-speed telecommunications, particularly in the metropolitan and local-area arena.

Prof Arnaud Mussot. University of Lille, France.
Microcomb dispersion control for high-performance microwave signal generation

Bio:
Arnaud Mussot received the Ph.D. in Physics from University of Besancon in 2004 in France. Until 2005 he had a post doc position at the French Atomic Agency (CEA) in Bordeaux. In 2005 he joined the University of Lille in France as a lecturer and he was appointed full professor in 2014. His main interests focus on ultrafast nonlinear effects in optical fibers, parametric effects, resonators, and optical frequency combs. He has co-authored 160 papers in peer-review journals, gave more than 60 Invited talks at international conferences and holds 8 patents. He is Optica fellow since 2023 and senior member of the institut universitaire de France.

Prof Yanne Chembo, University of Maryland
Microcombs: Challenges and Opportunities

Bio:

Yanne Chembo has also been recognised with multiple prestigious fellowships for his pioneering contributions to photonics and microwave systems. In 2019, he was named a Fellow of SPIE for his achievements in ultra-stable microwave photonic oscillators. The following year, he was honored as a Fellow of The Optical Society for his groundbreaking work in developing microwave photonic systems for aerospace and communication engineering, including optical frequency comb generators and optoelectronic oscillators. In 2023, the American Physical Society elected him as a Fellow for his contributions to understanding and applying complexity in time-delayed and spatially extended systems, spanning both quantum and classical photonics. These awards highlight his significant impact on advancing optical and microwave technologies.

Dr Jonathan Silver. NPL, UK
TBC

Bio:
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.

Prof Alexander Gaeta. Columbia University, USA
Overcoming and Exploiting Thermal Effects in Kerr Frequency Combs

Bio:
Alexander L. Gaeta is the David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Columbia University, renowned for his groundbreaking work in quantum and nonlinear photonics. His research has led to significant advancements in ultrafast optics, nonlinear silicon photonics, and optical frequency combs. Prior to joining Columbia, he was a professor at Cornell University, where he also served as Director of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics. Dr. Gaeta has published over 260 journal papers and has co-founded two photonics companies, Picoluz, Inc. and Xscape Photonics. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Optica, a premier journal in the field. A highly cited researcher, he has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the 2019 Charles Hard Townes Medal and the 2023 Stephen D. Fantone Distinguished Service Award from Optica. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Optica, and IEEE.

Prof Victor Torres. Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
 Advances in efficient microcomb sources

Bio:

Victor Torres-Company heads the Ultrafast Photonics group, focusing on advancing laser technology for the next generation of fiber-optic communication systems. His research spans photonic integration, nonlinear physics, and laser frequency combs, with notable publications in prestigious journals like Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and Physical Review Letters. In 2021, Victor co-founded the startup Iloomina AB with two PhD students to expedite the market adoption of chip-scale frequency combs.

In addition to his research, Victor actively contributes to teaching in the Wireless, Photonics, and Space Engineering program. Recognized for his contributions, he has received a European Research Council consolidator grant in 2018, a VR Consolidator grant in 2020, and a Marie Curie Fellowship. Victor also serves as the director of the VR Research Excellence center on integrated metaphotonics, a collaborative initiative between the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience and the Physics departments. The center aims to bridge knowledge gaps between inverse design techniques and heterogeneous integration.

Prof Andrey Matsko
Classical and Quantum Fluctuations of Microresonator Frequency Combs

Bio:
Dr. Matsko leads the Frequency and Timing Advanced Instrument Development Group of Jet Propulsion Laboratory supporting the Deep Space Network’s Time and Frequency System as well as Deep Space Atomic Clock developments and other edge cutting time and frequency projects. Prior that he worked at OEwaves Inc., where he took positions of Principal Engineer and, later, Chief Technology Officer. He was responsible for the business development, program management, and R&D research in the fields of timing, frequency and control, RF photonics, quantum and nonlinear optics. He contributed to the development of technology involving crystalline whispering gallery mode resonators, optical fibers, and atomic vapor cells; including electro-optical modulators, RF photonic receivers, optical and RF photonic filters, delay lines, clocks, magnetometers, gyroscopes, oscillators, and lasers. He is the author of more than 200 peer reviewed articles and inventor in 50 U.S. patents. Dr. Matsko is a Fellow of the APS, OSA, IEEE, and SPIE.

Prof Dmitry Skryabin. University of Bath, UK
Multicolor dissipative solitons

Bio:
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.

Prof Misha Sumetsky, Aston University, UK
Feasibility of a solely acoustic-wave-driven light amplifier

Bio:
Misha Sumetsky graduated from the Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia, and has Ph.D. (1979) and D.Sc.(1989) degrees from the same University. He worked at the Physics Department of Saint-Petersburg University of Telecommunications (Russia) from 1979 till 1995 when he joined Bell Laboratories (USA). In 2001, Dr Sumetsky continued his research at OFS Labs after transition of the Optical Fiber Research Department of Bell Labs into the OFS Labs. In 2013, he joined the Aston Institute of Photonics Technologies as a Professor of Photonics. Prof Sumetsky is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the recipient of Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He has more than 200 publications and more than 20 patents in optics and quantum mechanics. His present research interests are in optics of microresonators and nanophotonics.

Prof Irina Kabakova. ARC COMBS, Australia
Spectroscopy and imaging with frequency combs

Bio:

Dr. Irina Kabakova is an Associate Professor in Optical Physics and Associate Head of School (Education & Students) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She specializes in Brillouin light scattering microscopy, developing innovative techniques to map the micromechanical properties of cells and tissues for biomedical applications. Her research also focuses on photonic integration and imaging miniaturization for clinical diagnostics.

Dr. Kabakova has held research positions at the University of Sydney, AMOLF (Netherlands), and Imperial College London. She has received multiple prestigious awards, including the Australian Research Council Discovery Award, the ANZOS Award for Mid-Career Scientists (2022), and the UTS Mid-Career Researcher Award (2023). A Chief Investigator in ARC Centres of Excellence QUBIC and COMBS, she has published extensively in top-tier journals and has been an invited speaker at leading conferences worldwide.

Her work aims to accelerate the development of cost-effective, high-speed diagnostic technologies for diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, and fibrosis.

Prof David Moss. ARC COMBS, Australia
Ultrahigh bandwidth applications of Kerr microcombs

Bio:

Distinguished Professor David Moss is Director of the Optical Sciences Centre at Swinburne University and Deputy Director of the newly funded Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence COMBS: the Centre for Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE Photonics Society, Fellow of Optica, and the SPIE, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. He has a 35 year career spanning academia, industry, and government research labs across Canada, Japan, and Australia. His research interests span photonics, optical microcombs, nonlinear optics, nanophotonics, quantum optics, opto-electronics and optical communications. He won the 2011 Australian Museum and Google Eureka Science for Innovation in Computer Science. In May 2024 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Copenhagen by the Danish Technical University and King Frederik X for his pioneering work on optical microcombs. He has published over 800 research papers including 3 Nature and 9 Nature Photonics.

Prof. Carlos Alonso-Ramos.C2N Paris Saclay, Si Photonics, France
Harnessing nonlinearities in silicon nanostructures

Bio:
Carlos Alonso-Ramos obtained his PhD in June 2014 at the Universidad de Málaga, Spain, on the development of high-performance integrated photonic circuits for chip interconnects and next generation coherent transceivers. Currently he is a CNRS researcher in the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N) in Palaiseau, France. His research interest include the study of linear, nonlinear and optomechanical properties of silicon photonics circuits in the near- and mid-infrared for applications in telecom, sensing and quantum. He is in charge of the group of Micro and Nanophotonic devices on silicon since 2020.

Prof Erwan Lucas. ICB Dijon, France
TBC

Bio:
TBC

Prof Francis Leo, ULB, Belgium
Dynamics of temporal solitons in driven Kerr resonators.

Bio:

Born in Ixelles in 1981, he received his diploma in engineering (physics department) from the university of Brussels in 2005. His master thesis was entitled : “Microscopic study of 14O + p elastic scattering”. He then worked towards a PhD degree at the OPERA-photonique Department of the Applied Science Faculty of ULB thanks to a Doctoral fellowship of the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FRIA). He got the PhD degree in Applied Physical Sciences in November 2010 by defending his thesis entitled “Etude des structures dissipatives dans les cavités optiques passive : théorie et experience” (“Study of the dissipative structures of passive optical cavities : theory and experiment”). He stayed one year as a Postdoc in Brussels and then spent three years at the photonics research group in Ghent university to work on nonlinear silicon photonics.

He is now an associate research fellow at the OPERA-photonique group in Brussels.

Prof Alessia Pasquazi, Loughborough University, UK
TBC

Bio:
Prof. Alessia Pasquazi earned her PhD in Engineering from the University of Roma Tre in 2009. She was a MELS fellow in Quebec, Canada from 2010 to 2011 and an EU Marie-Curie Fellow between 2013 and 2015. Additionally, she was an Ernest Rutherford Fellow from 2018 to 2022 and was recognized as an ERC Starting Grant Laureate for the period 2020 to 2024. Prof. Pasquazi’s expertise lies in the domain of nonlinear photonics and microcombs.

Specializing in nonlinear photonics and microcombs, Prof. Pasquazi has been at the forefront of advancing ultrafast integrated optics. She led research in ultrafast integrated optics at the EPic Lab at the University of Sussex from 2014 to 2022. Currently, she is at Loughborough University where she directs the Emergent Photonics Research Centre. Prof. Pasquazi actively contributes to the academic community, serving as a member and chair of panels for numerous conferences organized by SPIE, OPTICA, and IEEE societies. In particualr, she served as the program chair for the OSA ‘Nonlinear Photonics Conference’ in 2018 and was the general chair for the same conference in 2020.

Prof Benoit Darquié, LPL Paris Sorbonne, France

TBC

Bio:
TBC

Birgitta Schultze-Bernhardt, Graaz, France
Dual Comb Spectroscopy for Electronic Fingerprinting

Bio:
Birgitta Schultze-Bernhardt (born 1981 in Erlangen, Germany) is a researcher at the Institute of Experimental Physics and the Institute of Materials Physics at Graz University of Technology. She is part of the three-year Leading Women Programme at TU Graz – a career initiative that prepares women assistant professors at TU Graz for future leading positions in university management. Schultze-Bernhardt is intensively engaged in laser technologies for the measurement of light-induced processes and received her doctorate at the Faculty of Physics of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching under Nobel Prize winner Theodor W. Hänsch. In June 2020, she was awarded the START Prize of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), one of the most lucrative and recognized science prizes in Austria.

Prof Delphine Morini, C2N Paris Saclay, France
TBC

Bio:
Delphine Marris-Morini is a Professor at Paris Saclay University. Her research interests at the Center for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies include silicon photonics in the near-IR and mid-IR wavelength range.She received an ERC starting grant (INsPIRE) on Ge-rich photonic integrated chips towards the mid-IR wavelength range for sensing and spectroscopic application. She received the bronze medal from CNRS in 2013. She published over 100 journal papers and she has been in charge of the group of Micro and Nanophotonic devices on silicon from 2015 to 2020.

Matteo Conforti, Ulille, France
Brillouin-Kerr frequency combs in fiber Fabry-Perot resonators.

Bio:

Matteo Conforti was born in Brescia, Italy, on October 5, 1978. He received his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering and his Ph.D. in Electronic Instrumentation from the University of Brescia in 2003 and 2009, respectively.

Since 2014, he has been a researcher at the Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Atomes et Molécules (PhLAM) in Lille. His primary research interests include nonlinear optics, solitons, rogue waves, and shock waves.

Alexandre Parriaux. University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Low-noise mid-infrared frequency combs

Bio:
Alexandre Parriaux is a Scientific Collaborator at the Time and Frequency Laboratory at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. His research focuses on the characterization and stabilization of lasers and frequency combs. During his PhD, he specialized in electro-optic frequency comb generation for spectroscopic applications and investigated nonlinear phenomena in optical fibers. His expertise lies at the intersection of precision metrology, photonics, and ultrafast optics.

Michal Lipson, TBC
High power integrated optical sources 

Bio:
TBC

Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Optical frequency combs as scalable sources for high-capacity communication systems

Bio:
Professor Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe is the group leader of the High-Speed Optical Communications group at the Department of Electrical and Photonics Engineering, at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and the Centre Leader of the Research Centre of Excellence SPOC (Silicon Photonics for Optical Communications) supported by the Danish National Research Foundation. His research interests are high-capacity optical communications, integrated photonics, nonlinear optical signal processing, quantum communication, and quantum information processing. He has authored or co-authored more than 500 peer reviewed publications, including 30 postdeadline papers at major conferences. He is a member of The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and a Fellow of the Optical Society.
He received the B.Sc. degree in physics and astronomy from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1996. In 1998 he received the International Diploma of Imperial College, London, UK and the M.Sc. degree from the University of Copenhagen. He received the Ph.D. degree in 2002 from DTU and is since 2009 Professor of Photonic Communication Technologies.

Marko Perestjuk, Menlo Systems GmbH
Industrialized Mid-IR Frequency Combs.

Bio:
Marko Perestjuk studied physics at the Humboldt University Berlin. He specialized in photonics and worked on integrated photonics at Fraunhofer HHI. From 2021 to 2025 he was working towards the PhD with a EU Marie-Curie program at RMIT University in Melbourne and the Institut des Nanotechnolgies de Lyon, focusing on micro-resonators for the mid-infrared. Since 2025, he is working as a product manager for optical frequency combs at Menlo Systems GmbH in Munich.

Laurent Labonte, Université Côte d’Azur
Exploring Quantum Correlations in the Frequency Domain: From Discrete Entanglement to Bright Multipartite Combs

Bio:
Laurent Labonté has been a member of the Quantum Photonics and Information team at INPHYNI for about fifteen years. He initially specialized in the characterization and exploitation of photonic crystal fibers during his doctoral and early academic career, before naturally moving towards the field of quantum photonics. His research focuses on the generation and use of non-classical light, particularly entangled photon pairs, for applications in quantum communications and quantum metrology. Throughout his career, he has co-authored around fifty peer-reviewed publications and a similar number of invited conference talks. He has supervised about ten PhD students and has been involved as a partner or coordinator in approximately fifteen national and European research projects.

Alireza Marandi, Caltech, USA
Ultrafast Classical and Quantum Nonlinear Nanophotonic Circuits

Bio:
Alireza Marandi is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Caltech. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2013. Before joining Caltech, he held positions as a postdoctoral scholar and a research engineer at Stanford, a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Informatics in Japan, and a senior engineer in the Advanced Technology Group of Dolby Laboratories. Marandi is a Senior Member of OSA and IEEE and has been the recipient of NSF CAREER award, the AFOSR YIP award, ARO Early Career Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the Young Scientist Prize of the IUPAP. He is named the 2019 KNI-Wheatley Scholar and a 2023 Sloan Foundation Fellow. Marandi is a co-founder and a member of board of directors of PINC Technologies Inc., which is a startup company in Pasadena developing photonic integrated nonlinear circuits.

Konstantin Vodopyanov, University of Central Florida
Dual-Comb Spectroscopy: From One Terahertz to One Petahertz

Bio:
Konstantin Vodopyanov is an Endowed Chair and Professor of Optics and Physics at CREOL, the College of Optics & Photonics at the University of Central Florida. He earned his undergraduate degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (PhysTech) and a Ph.D. from the Lebedev Physical Institute, where he worked in the Oscillations Laboratory led by Nobel Laureate Alexander Prokhorov. Prior to joining CREOL in 2013, he held academic positions at Imperial College London and Stanford University, and co-founded several technology companies in the U.S. Konstantin Vodopyanov is internationally recognized for pioneering work in mid-infrared sources and their spectroscopic applications. He pioneered ultra-broadband frequency combs based on optical subharmonic generation, enabling high-resolution dual-comb spectroscopy for parallel detection of trace molecules and isotopologues in complex gas mixtures. His group recently demonstrated high-precision electro-optically sampled dual-comb spectroscopy from the mid-IR to THz range, achieving real-time acquisition of 250,000 comb-line-resolved data points and surpassing previous spectral resolution of several important molecules relevant to exobiology by a factor of 400. These data are now incorporated into the HITRAN database, the global reference standard for molecular spectroscopy. He also led the development of UV frequency combs based on harmonic generation containing one million comb lines, resolved via dual-comb spectroscopy. He is the author of the book “Laser-Based Mid-Infrared Sources and Applications” (Wiley, 2020), a foundational resource in the field. Konstantin Vodopyanov is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), Optica, SPIE, and the UK Institute of Physics (IOP).