Concept
Helium-4
Related people (27)
Marcel Drabbels
Dr. Marcel Drabbels studied experimental physics at the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and in 1993 obtained his Ph.D. at that same university. He then moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied the dynamics of highly vibrationally excited molecules and developed a new detection technique to investigate the photodissociation of molecules. When he returned to the Netherlands in 1996 he joined the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam where he worked on the development of new types of infrared imaging and streak cameras. In 1997 Dr. Drabbels was awarded a fellowship of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and he moved to the Free University of Amsterdam where he studied the collision dynamics of molecules and initiated photodissociation experiments using ultrafast lasers. In October 1998 he was appointed as senior scientist at the EPFL where he studies the spectroscopy and dynamics of nanoscale systems. In March 2021 he was promoted to titular professor.
Benoît Marie Joseph Deveaud
Benoit Deveaud is now Research Director at Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau (France)
Benoît Deveaud was born in France in 1952. In 1971, he enters Ecole Polytechnique in Paris where he specializes in physics. In 1974, he joins the National Center for research in Telecommunications (CNET).
He undertakes at the same time studies on the main impurity centers in III-V semiconductors, and continues his studies in physics by preparing a diploma in solid state physics in Rennes. In 1984, he defends his PhD thesis at the University of Grenoble, under the supervision of Gérard Martinez. Meanwhile, his team gets interested in semiconductor microstructures and launches studies on the structural and optical properties of superlattices based on gallium arsenide. These studies highlight for example vertical transport in superlattices as well as the quantification of excitonic energies in a quantum well.
In 1986 he joins the team of Daniel Chemla in Bell Laboratories (Holmdel, USA) and takes part in the development of the first luminescence set-up having a temporal resolution better than 1 picosecond. He studies then ultrafast processes in quantum wells.
Returning to France in 1988, at CNET, he coaches a laboratory of high-speed studies, interested in the optical and electronic properties of semiconductor materials.
Appointed professor in Physics at EPFL in October 1993, his research team studies the physics of ultrafast processes in semiconductor micro and nanostructures and in devices that use them. He has been the Director the Institute of Micro and Optoelectronics since 1998, then of the Institute of Quantum Photonic and Electronics from 2003 to 2008.
His team takes an active part in the "Quantum Photonics" National Center of Competence in Research, of which he was the Deputy Director from 2001 to 2005 then the Director from July 2005 till the end of the NCCR in 2013
From 2008 till 2014 he has been Dean for Research at EPFL and president of the research commission.
Starting in 2014, he has been head of Physics, till his departure from EPFL in 2017.
He has been a divisional editor of Physical Review Letters from 2001 to 2007.
Franz-Karl Reinhart
Originaire d'Oberdorf (SO), Franz-Karl Reinhart est né à Bassersdorf (ZH) le 12 juillet 1933. Diplômé ingénieur électricien à l'Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Zurich en 1958, il obtient son doctorat ès sciences techniques à l'Institut d'électronique avancée de l'EPFZ en 1962.
En 1963, il est membre du "Technical Staff" du Laboratoire de recherche en électronique à l'état solide chez Bell, à Murray Hill (New Jersey) aux Etats-Unis. Il s'intéresse à l'optique des ondes guidées, particulièrement à la modulation électro-optique dans les guides d'onde à jonction p-n, aux lasers semiconducteurs à injection et à l'optique intégrée monolithique. Depuis mars 1983, il est professeur ordinaire d'optoélectronique à l'Institut de physique appliquée et, depuis octobre 1987, à l'Institut de micro- et optoélectronique de l'EPFL. Il enseigne dans les domaines de l'optique et de la physique du solide. Il a développé les bases d'un laboratoire d'optoélectronique et de supraconductivité à haute température de transition.
Il s'intéresse principalement à la physique des semiconducteurs, à la supraconductivité et aux applications industrielles. Son activité primaire consiste en la préparation et l'étude de nouveaux matériaux et dispositifs quantiques pour les applications en micro- et optoélectronique.
Manuel Alexandre Pouchon
Researcher in experimental and theoretical materials science, specializing in the development of nuclear fuels since 1997, and structural materials for nuclear reactors since 2004. Presently leading nuclear materials lab (LNM) and the advanced nuclear materials (ANM) group and programme at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. The applicability of different material candidates in advanced nuclear reactors is researched. Especially different aspects of radiation damage are investigated. For this purpose the concept of sample miniaturization is applied and further developed. Recently leading a new activity in particle fuel production and application. Previously working for the FUJI project at PSI, where different nuclear fuel forms for fast reactors were produced, characterized and finally irradiated in reactor. This work was performed in collaboration with the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) and Nuclear Research & consultancy Group (NRG) in the Netherlands. Previously an International Fellow at JNC investigating the thermal conductivity, sintering behaviour, and mechanical interaction of ceramic-sphere fuel beds; this includes the use of finite element methods for simulating various behaviours. Previously at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and for the Inert Matrix Fuel Project for burning plutonium in light water reactors, investigating the thermal conductivity and the diffusion and solubility of fission products of a zirconia-based non-fertile matrix.
Philippe Spätig
Philippe Spätig is currently Adjunct Professor at EPFL in the School of Basic Sciences, in the Laboratory of Reactor Physics and Systems Behaviours. He obtained his diploma of Engineer Physicist at EPFL in 1991 and his PhD at EPFL in 1995 on the role of thermal activation in the plasticity of the intermetallic Ni3Al. From 1995 to 1997, he worked as postdoc in the Materials Group of the Center for Research in Plasma Physics at EPFL, studying the effects of high-energy proton irradiation on alloys and pure metals. He then moved to the University of California Santa Barbara and spent two years in the group of Professor G.R. Odette, working on fracture mechanics of ferritic structural steels. He joined again the Materials Group of the Center for Research in Plasma Physics at EPFL in 2000 and worked in this group until the end of 2012. His research was focused on irradiation hardening and embrittlement of steels, as well as on the development of oxide dispersion strengthened steels. He also worked and developed experimental and analytical small specimen test techniques to reliably extract mechanical properties from limited material volume. In 2013, he joined the Laboratory for Nuclear Materials at Paul Scherrer Institute, while being associated with the Laboratory for Reactor Physics and System Behaviours at EPFL. Since then he mainly works on environmentally-assisted fatigue and fracture on austenitic and pressure vessel steels, where the effects of light water reactor environment on mechanical properties are investigated.
Aurelio Bay
Aurelio Bay graduated in physics at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) in 1980 and got his PhD degree from the same institution in 1986 for a work on the determination of the axial form factor of the ? meson.
He then went to Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories (LBL), USA as a post doc for two years, where he worked on the TPC/2? Electromagnetic Calorimeter and the SSC/LHC detector. He then came back to Europe and was named Maître Assistant at University of Geneva till 1994, where he started working at the L3 experiment of LEP at CERN.
He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne in 1994 and Full Professor in 1998, continuing working at LEP, LEP2 and LHCb at CERN , and starting a collaboration at BELLE experiment at KEK, Tsukuba (Japan).
At the University of Lausanne he was Director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Deputy Director of the Physics Department and Deputy of the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences.
In 2003, following the merge of UNIL physics department into the EPFL School of Basic Sciences, he was appointed Full Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Director of the EPFL Laboratory of High Energy Physics.
Olivier Schneider
After his thesis defense in particle physics in 1989 at University of Lausanne, Olivier Schneider joins LBL, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (California), to work on the CDF experiment at the Tevatron in Fermilab (Illinois), first as a research fellow supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and later as a post-doc at LBL. He participates in the construction and commissioning of the first silicon vertex detector to operate successfully at a hadron collider; this detector enabled the discovery of the sixth quark, named "top". Since 1994, he comes back to Europe and participates in the ALEPH experiment at CERN's Large Electron-Positron Collider, as CERN fellow and then as CERN scientific staff. He specializes in heavy flavour physics. In 1998, he becomes associate professor at University of Lausanne, then extraordinary professor at the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in 2003, and finally full professor at EPFL in 2010. Having worked since 1997 on the preparation of the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which started operation in 2009, he is now analyzing the first data. He also contributes since 2001 to the exploitation of the data recorded at the Belle experiment (KEK laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan). These two experiments study mainly the decays of hadrons containing a b quark, as well CP violation, i.e. the non-invariance under the symmetry between matter and antimatter.
Cécile Hébert
Cécile Hébert was born in France in 1970. She obtained her Ingeneer degree (physics) and her PhD degree (design of a new energy filter for transmission electron microscopy, under the direction of Prof. B. Jouffrey) at the Ecole Centrale in Paris.
As a post doc with Prof. P. Schattschneider, she was working on the calculation of the fine structure of ionisation edges in EELS. As a research assistant at the Vienna University of Technology, she was one of the main participant to the CHIRALTEM project dealing with the measurement of magnetic circular dichroism in the electron microscope.