Nicolas Grandjean received a PhD degree in physics from the University ofNice Sophia Antipolis in 1994 and shortly thereafter joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a permanent staff member. In 2004, he was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he created the Laboratory for advanced semiconductors for photonics and electronics. He was promoted to full professor in 2009. He was the director of the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics from 2012 to 2016 and then moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara where he spent 6 months as a visiting professor. Since 2018, he is the head of the School of Physics at the EPFL. He was awarded the Sandoz Family Foundation Grant for Academic Promotion, received the “Nakamura Lecturer” Award in 2010, the "Quantum Devices Award” at the 2017 Compound Semiconductor Week, and “2016 best teacher” award from the EPFL Physics School. His research interests are focused on the physics of nanostructures and III-V nitride semiconductor quantum photonics.
Marc Ilegems obtained degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Brussels in 1965 and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1970. From 1969 to 1977 he was a Member of Technical Staff at the Solid State Electronics Research Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill. He joined the Ecole Polytechnique Federale (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Lausanne in October 1977 as Professor and Director of the new Interdepartmental Institute of Microelectronics (1977-1983) and subsequently as Director of the Institute of Micro- and Optoelectronics (1983-2000) and of the Semiconductor Device Physics Laboratory (1983-2005).
Prof. Ilegems served as Dean of the Department of Physics from 1998 to 2000, and as Director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Quantum Photonics (2001-2005), the Swiss Priority Program OPTICS (1993-1999) and the Swiss National Program on Micro- and Optoelectronics (1983-90). He is a member of the Scientific Council and has acted as expert and consultant for several national and European research organizations.
His current activities include technical and patent consulting for private organizations, contributions to the definition and management of research programs in the framework of bilateral collaborations between Poland, Hungary and Switzerland (2011-2017), and participation as member of various ICT and FET review panels within the Horizon 2020 programme.
Prof. Ilegems received an honorary doctorate from the University of Toulouse (1998) and the Heinrich Welker Award from the Compound Semiconductor Symposium (2006) for his contributions to III-V semiconductor materials and device research.
The research activities of the Semiconductor Device Physics Laboratory centred on the physics and technology of semiconductor devices. The main subjects of interest included quantum photonics (semiconductor microcavities, light emitting diodes, lasers and detectors), wide bandgap semiconductor nitrides, physics of nano and low-dimensional structures, high electron mobility transistors, crystal growth and materials technology. The research programs were carried out in close collaboration with numerous academic and industrial groups in Switzerland and abroad, in particular within the framework of programs of the European Community.
Earlier research topics pursued at Bell Laboratories and at EPFL include Molecular Beam Epitaxy and doping of GaAs and AlGaAs thin films with applications to heterostructure lasers, detectors, and Bragg mirrors, hydride vapor phase epitaxy and physical characterization of GaN on sapphire, liquid-solid phase diagrams of ternary III-V compound systems, and silicon-based non-volatile memory cells.
Prof. Ilegems is the author or co-author of over 250 scientific publications (citation index h = 48) and 7 book chapters, and has supervised over 30 doctoral students in Lausanne. His academic contacts include stays as invited professor at Stanford University (1994) and at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (2007).
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2014 Associate Professor at the Institut des Matériaux, EPFL
2008 Assistant Professor Tenure Track at the Institut des Matériaux, EPFL
2009 Habilitation in Physics, Technische Universität München
2005-2010 Marie Curie Excellence Grant Team Leader at Walter Schottky Institut, Technische Universität München, on leave from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France)
2004-2005 Visiting Scientist at the California Institute of Technology, on leave from CNRS; Senior Scientist and co-founder of Aonex Technologies (a startup company for large area layer transfer of InP and Ge on foreign substrates for the main application of multi-junction solar cells)
2003 Permanent Research Fellow at CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, France
2001-2002 Postdoctoral Scholar at the California Institute of Technology
Study of wafer bonding and hydrogen-induced exfoliation processes for integration of mismatched materials in views of photovoltaic applications
Sponsor: Professor Harry A. Atwater
1998-2001 PhD in Materials Science, Ecole Polytechnique
Study of polymorphous silicon: growth mechanisms, optical and structural properties. Application to Solar Cells and Thin Film Transistors
Advisor: Pere Roca i Cabarrocas
1997-1998 Diplôme dEtudes Approfondis (D.E.A.) in Materials Science at Université Paris XI, France .
1993-1997 BA in Physics at Universitat de Barcelona
Prof. Dr. Niels Quack received the M.Sc. degree from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2005, and the Dr.Sc. degree from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland, in 2010. From 2011 to 2015, he was Postdoctoral Researcher and Visiting Scholar with the Integrated Photonics Laboratory, Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. From 2014 to 2015, he was Senior MEMS Engineer with Sercalo Microtechnology, Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He is currently an SNSF Assistant Professor with Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 papers in leading technical journals and conferences. His research interests include photonic micro and nanosystems, with an emphasis on diamond photonics and silicon photonic MEMS. He is Steering Committee Member of the IEEE International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN) and served as General Chair of the IEEE OMN 2018 and the Latsis Symposium 2019 on Diamond Photonics. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, Member of The Optical Society (OSA) and life member of SPIE.
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.
Ursula Oesterle joint the EPFL as Vice President for Innovation on March 1st 2021.
She holds a PhD in physics from EPFL and a master's degree in physics and chemistry from ETH Zurich.
Prior to that, Ursula spent 20 years in Silicon Valley and Asia working in open innovation and with start-ups. First, she worked in the telecom-IT industry and then in Life Science. She led digital innovation initiatives and corporate transformation programs.
Ursula is also an entrepreneur and co-founded The Mixing Bowl, whose mission is to promote IT innovation in food and agriculture industry through a business-driven dialogue between existing industry players, startups, investors and other food innovators.
She co-founded Corporate Innovators Huddle, a forum for sharing information and best practices on various aspects of innovation in large corporations.
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Eli Kapon received his Ph.D. in physics from Tel Aviv University, Israel in 1982. He then spent two years at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, as a Chaim Weizmann Research Fellow, where he worked mainly on phase-locked arrays of semiconductor lasers. From 1984 till 1993 he was with Bellcore, New Jersey, first as member of technical staff, and from 1989 as District Manager. At Bellcore, he worked on integrated optics in III-V compounds and on low-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures, particularly quantum wires and quantum dots. He managed the Quantum Structures District and the Integrated Optoelectronics District at Bellcore from 1989 till 1992 and from 1992 till 1993, respectively. In 1993 he was appointed Professor of Physics of Nanostructures at the Physics Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the Laboratory of Physics of Nanostructures. In 1999-2000 he spent his sabbatical as Sackler Scholar at the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies in Tel Aviv University, Israel. During that period he helped establishing the Tel Aviv University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and served as its first Director from 2000 to 2002. In 2001 he founded the start up BeamExpress and has been serving as its Chief Scientist. He is currently serving as Director of the Institute of Quantum Electronics and Photonics in the Faculty of Basic Sciences at EPFL. His research interests include self-organization of nanostructures, optical properties and electron transport in low-dimensional quantum structures, quantum wire and quantum dot lasers, photonic crystals and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers. He is author or co-author of >300 journal articles, >10 patents, and editor of two books on semiconductor lasers.
Prof. Kapon is Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Physical Society of America, and a recipient of a 2007 Humboldt Research Award.
