Nobel Laureates, Plenary & Invited Speakers

Prof Sir Konstantin ‘Kostya’ Novoselov FRS was born in Russia in August 1974. He has both British and Russian citizenship. He is best known for isolating graphene at The University of Manchester in 2004, and is an expert in condensed matter physics, mesoscopic physics and nanotechnology. Every year since 2014 Kostya Novoselov is included in the list of the most highly cited researchers in the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for his achievements with graphene. Kostya holds positions of Langworthy Professor of Physics and the Royal Society Research Professor at The University of Manchester.

He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and undertook his PhD studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands before moving to The University of Manchester in 2001. Professor Novoselov has published more than 250 peer-reviewed research papers. He was awarded with numerous prizes, including Nicholas Kurti Prize (2007), International Union of Pure and Applied Science Prize (2008), MIT Technology Review young innovator (2008), Europhysics Prize (2008), Bragg Lecture Prize from the Union of Crystallography (2011), the Kohn Award Lecture (2012), Leverhulme Medal from the Royal Society (2013), Onsager medal (2014), Carbon medal (2016), Dalton medal (2016) among many others. He was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours.

Allan H. MacDonald received his B.Sc. degree from St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1973, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Toronto in 1974 and 1978. He was a member of the research staff of the National Research Council of Canada from 1978 to 1987 and has taught at Indiana University (1987-2000) and the University of Texas  at Austin (2000-present) where he now holds the Sid W. Richardson Chair in Physics. He has contributed to research on electronic structure theory, the quantum Hall effect, magnetism, and superconductivity, among a variety of other topics. Dr. MacDonald is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Herzberg Medal (1987), the Buckley Prize (2007), and the Ernst Mach Honorary Medal (2012).

Claudia Felser studied chemistry and physics at the University of Cologne (Germany, completing there both her diploma in solid state chemistry (1989) and her doctorate in physical chemistry (1994). After postdoctoral fellowships at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart (Germany) and the CNRS in Nantes (France), she joined the University of Mainz (Germany) in 1996 becoming a full professor there in 2003. She is currently Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden (Germany). Her research foci are the design and discovery of novel inorganic compounds, in particular, Heusler compounds for multiple applications and new topological quantum materials. Felser was honored as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Magnetics Society. In 2011 and 2017 she received an ERC Advanced grant. Felser was awarded the Alexander M. Cruickshank Lecturer Award of the Gordon Research Conference, a SUR-grant Award from IBM and the Tsungmin Tu Research Prize from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, the highest academic honor granted to foreign researchers in Taiwan. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics, London and since 2018 a member of the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, the Acatech (German National Academy of Engineering) and since 2020 International Member of National Academy of engineering, USA.  In 2019 she received the APS James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials together with Bernevig and Dai.

Prof. Giulia Galli is the Liew Family professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Institute for Molecular Engineering and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. She also holds a Senior Scientist position at Argonne National Laboratory, where she is the director the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials.  Prior to joining UChicago, she was Professor of Chemistry and Physics at UC Davis (2005-2013) and the head of the Quantum Simulations group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL, 1998-2005). She holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the International School of Advanced Studies in Italy. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the recipient of the LLNL Science and Technology Award, the Department of Energy Award of Excellence, the 2018 Materials Research Society Theory Award, and the 2019 APS David Adler Lectureship in Materials Physics.

Jelena Vuckovic (PhD Caltech 2002) is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and by courtesy of Applied Physics at Stanford, where she leads the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics Lab, and is a director of Q-FARM, Stanford-SLAC Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative. Vuckovic has received many awards including the Distinguished Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics – MPQ (2019), the Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Munich (2013), the Humboldt Prize (2010), the DARPA Young Faculty Award (2008), the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE in 2007), and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2006). She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), of the Optical Society of America (OSA), and of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE).

Masataka Higashiwaki received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in solid-state physics from Osaka University, Japan, in 1994, 1996, and 1998, respectively. After a two-year postdoctoral fellow, in 2000, he joined the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), Japan. From 2007 to 2010, he took a temporary leave from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), which was renamed from CRL, and joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara as a Project Scientist. He returned to NICT in 2010 and started a pioneering work on Ga2O3-based electronics. He is now a Director at Green ICT Device Advanced Development Center. Higashiwaki is a recipient of several awards, including the 2014 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Prize and the 2007 International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS) Young Scientist Award. His current research interest is in Ga2O3 device and material engineering.

Pascale Senellart is a CNRS research director working in the field of optical quantum technologies. She received her Ph.D. from the University Paris 6 in 2001 and joined the CNRS after two postdoctoral positions in industrial laboratories. She is a specialist of quantum optics and cavity quantum electrodynamics phenomena in semiconductor systems. Her group develops devices for the generation and manipulation of quantum light: single photon sources, sources of many-entangled photons, non-linear gates and more. They also explore their applications in quantum computing and quantum communications as well as the energetics laws of optical quantum technologies. Dr. Senellart has received several awards including the CNRS silver medal (2014), the distinguished lecturer award of the Munich Center for Quantum Sciences and Technologies (2020) and the Mergier-Bourdeix award of the French Science Academy (2021). She was elected OSA Fellow in 2018. In 2017, she cofounded Quandela, a spin-off company specialized in single-photon sources and their applications

Sankar Das Sarma, a theoretical condensed matter physicist, is the Richard E Prange Chair of Physics and a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.  He is also the Director of the Condensed Matter Theory Center and a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland.  Das Sarma’s field of research covers semiconductor physics, low dimensional electron systems, many body theory, strongly correlated materials, quantum topological phenomena, quantum Hall effects, Dirac and Weyl materials, many body localization, superconductivity, magnetism, Majorana fermions, spintronics, statistical mechanics, and quantum information.  Das Sarma’s work on solid state quantum computers focuses on semiconductor quantum dot based spin qubits and semiconductor nanowire based topological qubits.

Seigo Tarucha received the B. E. and M. S. degrees in the University of Tokyo in 1976 and 1978, respectively and joined NTT Basic Research Laboratories. He received the Ph. D degree in the University of Tokyo in 1986. In 1998 he moved to the University of Tokyo as a professor in Phys. Department and then to Appl. Phys. Department in 2005. He was a guest scientist in Max-Planck-Institute in 1986 and 1987 and in Delft University in 1995. He is currently working on quantum transport in semiconductor nanostructures and spin-based quantum computing. He was a director of Cryogenic Center in the Tokyo university from 2015 to 2017, and has been a division head of Quantum Information Electronics in Center for Emergent Matter Science (CESM), Riken since 2013. He has been a deputy of CEMS since 2018. He received Kubo Ryogo award, The Quantum Devices award in 1998, Nishina award in 2002, National medal with purple ribbon in 2004, Leo Esaki Award in 2007, and Achievement award of Japan Applied Physics Society in 2018.

Prof. Young Hee Lee has been a full professor of the Physics Department at SKKU, since 2001. He received Ph. D. from Kent State University in Ohio (1986) in physics. Prior to joining SKKU in 2001, Prof. Lee was a full professor in the Physics Department at Chonbuk National University since 1986. He was a visiting scholar at Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University in 1989, IBM, Zurich in 1993, and Michigan State University in 1996. Currently, he is the Director of Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics, Institute for Basic Science (IBS) at SKKU. He was awarded the first SKKU fellow in 2004 at SKKU, Science award from Korean Physical Society in 2005, Lee Hsun Research Award, IMR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China in 2007, Presidential Award in Science and Education, Korea in 2008, and Einstein Award IMR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China in 2017. He was also nominated as a National Scholar by Ministry of Education in 2006 and has been a fellow of Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) since 2007, and fellow of TWAS in 2019. He got Sudang prize and 2015 and recently Kyung Am prize in 2019.

Yuanbo Zhang received his BS from Peking University in 2000 and his PhD in Physics from Columbia University in 2006. He was a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley from Sept. 2006 to Jun. 2009, a postdoc research associate at IBM Almaden Research Center from Mar. 2010 to Sept. 2010, and a professor of Fudan University from 2011. His main research interests are: Electronic transport in low-dimensional systems including graphene; Scanning probe techniques and their application in studying low-dimensional nanostructures. Major honors include: IUPAP Young Scientist Prize, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (2010); Nishina Asia Award, Nishina Memorial Foundation, Japan (2014).

Giorgia Fugallo- CNRS

Giorgia Fugallo is a permanent CNRS researcher at the Thermal and Energy Laboratory of Polytech’ Nantes.
She received her PhD in Physics at King’s College London in 2012, she was then a Postdoctoral Researcher at Sorbonne University-Paris VI and at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Prior to join CNRS in 2017, she got back to France in 2014 with the EDF & Ecole Polytechnique “Renewable Energies” Research Fellow Grant. Her main research interests had indeed always focused on theoretical and numerical modelling of material properties for energy applications, ranging from conductive and radiative thermal properties for thermal management applications, to electronic excitations and excitonic effects in varied spectroscopies for photovoltaic applications. She has always been paying particular attention to intriguing dimensionality effects in layered materials.

Alex Zettl

Alex Zettl received his B.A. from UC Berkeley in 1978 and his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1983. He joined the Physics Department faculty at UC Berkeley in 1983. Currently he is Professor of Physics at UC Berkeley, Senior Scientist at LBNL, and Member of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at Berkeley. Awards and Honors include Presidential Young Investigator Award (1984-89), Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1984-86), IBM Faculty Development Award (1985-87), and Miller Professorship (1995), Lucent Technologies Faculty Award (1996), Fellow of the American Physical Society (1999), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Outstanding Performance Award (1995 and 2004), James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials (2006), Miller Professorship (2007), and R&D 100 Award (2004 & 2015).

James Edgar

James H. Edgar is University Distinguished Professor in the Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering at Kansas State University. He is currently on assignment at United States National Science Foundation as a manager of the Electronic and Photonic Materials Program in the Division of Materials Research. Dr. Edgar earned his BS and PhD degrees from the University of Kansas (1981) and University of Florida (1987) respectively. The focus of his research is on the application of chemical engineering principles to improve materials processing of electronic, optoelectronic, and photonic devices. His current research is on the crystal growth, characterization, and applications of hexagonal boron nitride.

Prof. Dmitri Golberg – Australian Laureate Fellow 

Australian Laureate Fellow – Professor Dmitri Golberg – is a co-director of the Centre for Materials Science of Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He joined QUT in 2017 after more than 20 years of his career development in Japan, where he held the positions of Principal Investigator and Group Leader of the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), and an adjunct Professor of Tsukuba University. Dmitri is a recipient of Tsukuba Prize (2005), Thomson Reuters Research Front Award (2012), “Seto” Prize by Japan Microscopy Society (2016), NIMS President Award (2017) and QUT Faculty Award (2019). He published over 700 papers (>45,000 citations, H-118)), was nominated as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters over 2015-2019, registered over 130 Japanese and International patents, and delivered more than 150 Invited, Keynote and Plenary lectures at the International Forums. Currently, Dmitri is placed within top 300 most-cited world materials scientists on the Web of Science.

Dr. François Peeters – University of Antwerp

Dr. François Peeters is Professor of Physics at the University of Antwerp. He received the PhD degree in physics from the University of Antwerp in 1982. He did postdoctoral research at Bell Laboratory (Murray Hill, NJ, USA) and Bell Communications Research (Red Bank, NJ, USA). Peeters is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the European Physical Society. He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium and of the Academia Europaea. The University of Szeged awarded him a Doctor Honoris Causa and in 2013 he was awarded the Francqui Chair. He is associate editor of Journal of Applied Physics, co-editor of Europhysics Letters and Editor-in-chief of Solid State Communications. He published over 1000 papers with more than 37,000 citations and h-index 84. His areas of interests are computational modelling of mesoscopic and nanoscopic semiconductor and superconducting nanostructures, like phase transitions (structural and melting), artificial atoms (quantum dots and coupled quantum dots), graphene and other two dimensional atomic layered systems.

Mark A. Eriksson – Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madiso

Mark A. Eriksson is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Prior to joining the University of Wisconsin in 1999 he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997 and was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Labs for two years from 1997-1999. Eriksson leads a multi-university team studying semiconductor-based quantum computing and focusing on the development of spin qubits in silicon/silicon-germanium gate-defined quantum dots. Eriksson is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Stephanie Simmons – Simon Fraser University

Stephanie Simmons is an Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair, and CIFAR Fellow, in the Department of Physics at Simon Fraser University, and she leads the Silicon Quantum Technology research group. Stephanie Simmons earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science at Oxford University in 2011 as a Clarendon Scholar and a B.Math (Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Physics) from the University of Waterloo. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of New South Wales and held a Junior Research Fellowship and a Glasstone Fellowship at St. John’s College in Oxford University. Stephanie works on silicon-based spin qubits with the particular aim to develop CMOS-compatible scalable quantum technologies. Her work was awarded a Physics World Top Ten Breakthrough of the Year of 2013 and again in 2015. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, CBC, BBC, Scientific American, the New Scientist, and others.

John Nichol – University of Rochester

John Nichol is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. Previously, he was a postdoctoral associate at Harvard University, and he earned a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nichol investigates the quantum mechanics of nanoscale objects, especially individual electrons in semiconductor quantum dots. Nichol’s current research focuses on improving the coherence of electron spin qubits using new materials and control methods, exploring new ways to transfer quantum information between distant spin qubits, and many-body quantum coherence in spin chains. Nichol is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award.

Sophia Economou – Virginia Tech

Sophia Economou is an Associate Professor of Physics and the Hassinger Senior Fellow of Physics at Virginia Tech. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, San Diego in 2006, after which she was a National Research Fellow at the Naval Research Lab, where she eventually held a Research Physicist staff position until 2015. In 2015, she moved to Virginia Tech as Associate Professor. Her present research interests are at the interface of quantum information science, condensed matter physics and quantum optics. She works on quantum computing, communication and simulation, spin qubits, nanophotonics, superconducting qubits, quantum control and decoherence.

Xiaojing (Jeana) Hao – UNSW Research

Dr Xiaojing Hao obtained her PhD in the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering of UNSW in 2010, and currently the Associate Professor, Scientia Fellow, and ARC Future Fellow at UNSW. Dr Hao has focused her research on low-cost high-efficiency thin film and tandem solar cells for more than ten years, researching on various compound semiconductor thin film PV materials, initially using Si, and then kesterite, more recently extended to other solar photovoltaic and solar fuel devices based on earth-abundant energy materials. Dr Hao now leads a strong group in the above areas. She has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal papers, including publications in Nature Energy, Energy & Environmental Science, Advanced Energy Materials, with several awards for her research excellence. She was awarded the 2018 NSW’s Premier’s Prize for Energy Innovation in NSW and Australia’s Most Innovative Engineers 2019.

Anderson Janotti 

Dr. Janotti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Delaware.  He obtained his Ph.D. in Materials Physics from University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2000 for theoretical work on defects and surfaces of semiconductors. This was followed by a Postdoctoral appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, from 2000 to 2002, to work on computational design of novel photovoltaic materials for multi-junction solar cells. From 2002 to 2004, Dr. Janotti was a Research Associate in the Metals and Ceramics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, working on theoretical models for high-temperature metal superalloys. In 2004, he joined the Materials Department at the University of California Santa Barbara as a Project Scientist. At UCSB he studied defects and doping in oxide and nitride semiconductors, (de)hydrogenation processes in metal hydrides, nitride surfaces, high-k dielectrics, defects and interfaces in complex oxides, and two-dimensional layered materials for electronic applications.

In 2015 he was appointed as the faculty at the University of Delaware.  Prof. Janotti’s research covers the computational design of novel materials, including the study of processes involving defects, doping, interfaces and surfaces, using state of the art first-principles calculations based on the Density Functional Theory. More generally, Dr. Janotti is interested in the discovery and development of novel materials for electronics and energy applications.  Prof. Janotti has authored over 200 technical publications, which accumulated over 27,000 citations, and has an h-index of 74 according to Google Scholar

Armando Rastelli – Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria

Prof. Armando Rastelli heads the Semiconductor Physics at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria since 2012. He obtained his PhD in Physics from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 2003. During his PhD he was research assistant at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and Marie-Curie-Fellow at the Technical University of Tampere, Finland. From 2003 to 2007 he was first PostDoc and then group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of Stuttgart, Germany, and, till 2012 at the Leibniz Institute of Dresden, Germany. In 2019 he was elected corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Throughout his career, he has been developing new methods to obtain, study, and control epitaxial quantum dots. The main current focus is on the optimization of quantum dots as quantum light sources and their post-growth tuning via microstructured piezoelectric actuators. He is coauthor of more than 230 peer-reviewed papers with more than 7000 citations and has given 100 invited talks on his research activities.

Chris Ford – University of Cambridge

Chris Ford is Professor of Quantum Electronics at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. After studying at Cambridge, and a postdoc at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, he returned to Cambridge as a Research Fellow at Girton College and then university lecturer and later full professor. He pioneered measurements of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in semiconductor rings and antidots, and quenching of the Hall effect in ballistic junctions. He introduced the plunger gate for tuning gate-defined quantum dots, and manipulates single electrons using surface acoustic waves, transferring them back and forth between static quantum dots, recently using them to produce single photons. He also investigates interactions in 1D channels by measuring tunnelling between them and a 2D layer below acting as a spectrometer. His team has observed spin-charge separation and has gone beyond the linear Luttinger-liquid regime, observing ‘replica’ dispersions for the first time, and a momentum-dependent power-law.

Ilaria Zardo – University of Basel

Since 2015, Ilaria Zardo is assistant professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Basel, where she leads the Nanophononics group. She received her PhD in Physics in 2010 from the Technische Universität (TU) München and the Università degli Studi di Roma “Sapienza”. She was awarded in 2017 with the ERC Starting Grant for the project “PHONUIT”. In 2015 she received the Hertha-Sponer Prize, awarded to a female scientist for outstanding scientific work in the field of physics. Her expertise is spectroscopy on single nanostructures, with focus on inelastic light scattering experiments, and investigation of thermal transport in low dimensional systems.

Prof. Susanne Stemmer – University of California, Santa Barbar

Susanne Stemmer is Professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She did her doctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart (Germany) and received her degree from the University of Stuttgart in 1995.  Her research interests are in the development of scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques, molecular beam epitaxy, functional and strongly correlated oxide heterostructures, and topological materials.  She has authored or co-authored more than 250 publications.  Honors include election to Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Materials Research Society, Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America, and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship of the Department of Defense.

Prof. Chris Palmstrom

Chris Palmstrøm is a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Materials Departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research involves atomic level control and interface formation during molecular beam and chemical beam epitaxial growth of metallic compounds, metal oxides and compound semiconductors. He received his B.Sc. in physics and electronic engineering and Ph.D. in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Leeds. After being a Lecturer in Norway and a Research Associate at Cornell, he joined Bellcore as a Member of Technical Staff in 1985. From 1994-2007 he was a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. In 2007 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has pioneered dissimilar materials epitaxial growth studies using a combination of molecular beam epitaxial growth with in-situ surface science probes, and ex-situ structural and electronic characterization.

Anita Ho-Baillie – University of Sydney 

Professor Anita Ho-Baillie is the John Hooke Chair of Nanoscience at the University of Sydney. She completed her Bachelor of Engineering on Co-op scholarship and PhD (2005) at University of New South Wales. She has worked in British Aerospace, Alcatel Australia, Pacific Solar and Solar Sailor. Her research interests include the study of photovoltaic materials and devices at nanoscale and engineering them for the purpose of integrating solar cells onto all kinds of surfaces generating clean energy. A highly cited researcher, she has been identified as one of the leaders in advancing perovskite solar cells. She is well known in the media for her building integrated photovoltaics research and setting solar cell energy efficiency records in various categories such as silicon (Si) solar cells, large area single junction perovskite solar cells, perovskite/Si tandem solar cells and III-V/Si tandem solar cells.

Chennupati Jagadish – Research School of Physics at the ANU

Professor Jagadish is a Distinguished Professor and Head of Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Nanotechnology Group in the Research School of Physics at the ANU.  Jagadish is the Editor-in-Chief of Applied Physics Reviews (IF:12.75), Editor of 3 book series and serves on editorial boards of 19 other journals.  He has published more than 930 research papers (650 journal papers), holds 5 US patents, co-authored a book, co-edited 13 books and edited 12 conference proceedings and 17 special issues of Journals. He is a Fellow of 9 science and engineering Academies and 14 professional societies. He has received many awards including IEEE Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology, IEEE Photonics Society Engineering Achievement Award, OSA Nick Holonyak Jr Award, Welker Award, IUMRS Somiya Award, UNESCO medal for his contributions to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnologies and Lyle medal from Australian Academy of Science for his contributions to Physics, AOS Beattie Steel Medal and IEEE Education Award from EDS.  He has received Australia’s highest civilian honor, AC, Companion of the Order of Australia in 2016.

Trong Toan Tran – University of Technology, Sydney

Dr. Trong Toan Tran is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Mathematical and Physical Science, Faculty of Science, UTS. He is a physicist with some background in Material Science and Chemical Engineering. His research interest includes quantum optics, nanophotonics, solid-state physics, and nanofabrication.  Dr. Tran completed his doctoral thesis entitled “Quantum Emission from Hexagonal Boron Nitride” with Prof. Igor Aharonovich and Prof. Milos Toth. During his Ph.D. candidature, he has made a breakthrough in the field of quantum optics and materials science with his discovery of a class of room-temperature ultra-bright quantum light sources embedded in sheets of atomically thin crystals, known as “white-graphene” or hexagonal boron nitride. Currently, Dr. Tran’s actively researches novel quantum light sources and their integration into optical architectures to form high-performance and robust on-chip platforms, as well as their applications in secured communications, nanoscale sensing, and advanced photonic technologies.

Paul Burn

After completing my PhD, I carried out post-doctoral research at Cambridge University for four years, being the Dow Research Fellow at Christ’s College for three years. In 1992 I took up a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry at Oxford University and a Tutorial Fellowship at University College, Oxford. In March 2007 I joined The University of Queensland as an ARC Federation Fellow.

Paulina Plochocka

Plochocka obtained her PhD cum-laude in 2004 at the University of Warsaw working on the dynamics of many-body interactions between carriers in doped semi-magnetic quantum wells (QW). During her first post doc at Weizmann Institute of science, she started working on the electronic properties of a high mobility 2D electron gas in the fractional and integer quantum Hall Effect regime. She continued this topic during second post doc in LNCMI Grenoble, where she was holding individual Marie Curie scholarship. At the same time, she enlarged her interest of 2D materials towards graphene and other layered materials as TMDCs or black phosphorus. In 2012 she obtained permanent position in LNCMI Toulouse, where she created the Quantum Electronics group, which investigates the electronic and optical properties of emerging materials under extreme conditions of high magnetic field and low temperatures. Examples include semiconducting layer materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides, GaAs/AlAs core shell nanowires and organic inorganic hybrid perovskites.

Joseph J. Berry

Joseph Berry (@joe_jberry) is a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working on halide perovskite solar cells. His PhD for work was on spin transport and physics in semiconductor heterostructures from Penn State University. His efforts at NREL emphasize relating basic interfacial properties to technologically relevant device level behaviors in traditional and novel semiconductor heterostructures including oxides, organics and most recently hybrid semiconducting materials. He leads the US Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Office’s SETO core technology program, “De-risking Halide Perovskite Solar Cells” at NREL. He is also a principle investigator on the NREL lead Department of Energy, Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE) Energy Frontier Research Center, exploring basic aspect of hybrid materials (www.choise-efrc.org).

Hongxia Wang

Dr. Hongxia Wang is a full Professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia and a theme leader in two research centres at QUT (Centre for Materials Science and Centre for Clean Energy Technology and Practice). Her research has been primarily focusing on development of new routes to enhance performance and stability of next generation solar cells and energy storage devices including dye/quantum dots sensitized solar cells, perovskite solar cells, CZTS based thin film solar cells as well as supercapacitors. Her research has led to over 180 high quality scientific articles and two book chapters to date. She was also an inventor of four patents in the area of energy materials. One of her paper was awarded “Solar Energy Journal Best Paper Award for 2016 in the topic of Photovoltaics” by International Solar Energy Society. She was recipient of several prestigious fellowships including “Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship”, “ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Industry)”, “Queensland University of Technology Vice-Chancellor Senior Research Fellow”.

Lan Fu – Department of Electronic Materials Engineering

Lan Fu received her PhD degree from the Australia National University (ANU) in 2001 and she is currently a Professor at the Research School of Physics, ANU. Prof. Fu was the recipient of the IEEE Photonic Society Graduate Student Fellowship (2000), Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellowship (2002), ARF/QEII Fellowship (2005) and Future Fellowship (2012). She is a senior member of IEEE, IEEE/Photonics and EDS societies. She is also the current member of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee on Materials Science and Engineering, and Secretary of the Executive Committee of Australian Materials Research Society. Lan Fu’s main research interests include design, fabrication and integration of optoelectronic devices (lasers/LEDs and photodetectors) and high efficiency solar cells based on low-dimensional III-V compound semiconductor structures including quantum wells, self-assembled quantum dots and nanowires grown by metal-organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD).

Rose Ahlefeldt

Rose is a Research Fellow in the Research School of Physics at the Australian National University (ANU). She completed her PhD at ANU in 2013, and then worked at Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, France as well as at Montana State University, USA on a Fulbright Scholarship, before returning to Australia in 2016 as an Australian Research Council DECRA fellow. In 2018 she was named Australian Capital Territory Scientist of the Year for her research. Her research focuses on characterising and optimising rare earth crystals for use in quantum information, including as quantum memories, quantum processors and optical quantum interconnects.

Edmund Linfield

Professor Edmund Linfield received his PhD from the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1991, and took up the Chair of Terahertz Electronics in the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds in 2014. He is Director of the University’s Bragg Centre for Materials Research, and co-leads the ‘Atoms to Devices’ theme of the UK’s Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials Research and Innovation. Professor Linfield’s research explores the science and technology of the terahertz frequency region of the electromagnetic spectrum. He jointly led the European Community’s programme that demonstrated the first terahertz frequency quantum cascade laser in 2002, and his current research explores the growth, fabrication, physics and applications of these devices, as well the development of terahertz frequency imaging and spectroscopy systems. He jointly won the UK’s Institute of Physics Faraday Medal in 2014, and is a recipient of a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.

Hannah Joyce

Dr Hannah Joyce is a Reader in low-dimensional electronics at the University of Cambridge. She received her PhD in 2010 from the Australian National University and then joined the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2013, Hannah joined the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where she leads a research group focussing on the development of novel nanomaterials for applications in photonics and electronics. Hannah’s research interests include the growth of novel low-dimensional semiconductor materials via metalorganic chemical vapour deposition, the development of terahertz spectroscopy for contact-free characterisation of nanomaterials, and the development of new nanomaterial-based devices such as photovoltaics, photodetectors and terahertz photonic modulators.

Roger Lewis

Senior Professor of Physics at the University of Wollongong, Australia

Marcos Guimarães – University of Groningen

Marcos H. D. Guimarães studied Physics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, where he obtained a Bachelor and Master degrees in Physics. He received his PhD degree in 2015 from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, working on “Spin and Charge Transport in Graphene Devices”. After his PhD he was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, USA (2014-2017), supported by two personal fellowships (KIC Fellow, and NWO Rubicon), and Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands (2017-2019), supported by a NWO VENI personal grant. Since 2019 Marcos Guimarães is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research is focused on the use of optical and electrical measurement techniques to study and control the spintronic properties of 2D van der Waals materials and their heterostructures.

Prof. Christian Degen – ETH Zurich

Prof. Christian Degen received a diploma in physics in 2001 and a Ph.D in nuclear magnetic resonance in 2005 from ETH Zurich. From 2006-2008, he worked under the guidance of Dr. Dan Rugar in the Nanoscale Studies division of the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose CA. In September of 2009, he was appointed tenure track assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to ETH Zurich in 2011. Prof. Degen received an ERC Starting Grant in 2012 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2018. His laboratory focuses on the development of new magnetic nanoprobes, especially diamond-based quantum sensors and nanomechanical transducers. Prof. Degen is a co-founder of the quantum technology spin-off company QZabre (www.qzabre.com)

Prof. Brian Zhou – Boston College

Brian Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Boston College, where he leads the Quantum Spintronics Lab. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 2014 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago in 2018. Prof. Zhou’s research group focuses on utilizing atomic-scale defect centers in diamond for applications in quantum information and sensing. He has made contributions to the field of quantum control, with experimental demonstrations of Berry phase, holonomic quantum gates, and shortcuts-to-adiabaticity for single spins. Recently, he developed a technique to utilize nitrogen-vacancy centers as sensors for the local optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional materials.

Seth Kurfman

Seth Kurfman is a Ph.D. candidate and senior graduate student at The Ohio State University working under Dr. Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, and is projected to graduate in Fall 2022. His work primarily focuses on the low-loss, organic-molecule-based semiconductor ferrimagnet vanadium tetracyanoethylene (V[TCNE]x, x~2). His recent studies include investigation of the structural and electronic properties of this exotic material to reveal the origin of its magnetism. He is currently studying and utilizing its magnetostriction properties for strain-tuning of FMR, magnetothermal phenomena via the spin Seebeck effect to explore its magnonic properties, and spin pumping effects in V[TCNE]x/metal heterostructures

Jelena Klinovaja

Jelena Klinovaja received her Bachelor and Master degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University), Department of General and Applied Physics, in 2007 and 2009, resp. Subsequently, she joined the group of Prof. Daniel Loss at the University of Basel, where she received her PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2012 with summa cum laude. In 2013, she was awarded a three-year Harvard Fellowship to perform independent research in the area of the theoretical quantum condensed matter physics. Klinovaja was appointed as a tenure track assistant professor at the Department of Physics at the University of Basel in 2014. In February 2019 she was tenured and promoted to associate professor. In her career, she was offered several prestigious fellowships and received research prizes such as the Swiss Physical Society Prize 2013 in Condensed Matter Physics, sponsored by IBM. In 2017, she has received the prestigious Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC).

Aurelien David – Google

Aurelien David is an expert in III-Nitride optoelectronics, with 15 years of experience. His research work focuses on III-Nitride physics and optics, LED efficiency and color science. It has led to several demonstrations of record-high performance LED devices. He is currently a researcher at Google. Prior, he was Chief Scientist at Soraa where he led the R&D effort. He is the author of more than 50 journal publications and 60 patents in this field.

Chris G. Van de Walle – Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, California

Chris Van de Walle is a Distinguished Professor of Materials and the inaugural recipient of the Herbert Kroemer Endowed Chair in Materials Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Prior to joining UCSB in 2004, he was a Principal Scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).  He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1986, and was a postdoc at IBM Yorktown Heights (1986-1988) and a Senior Member of Research Staff at Philips Laboratories in Briarcliff Manor (1988-1991). Professor Van de Walle develops and employs first-principles computational techniques to model the structure and behavior of materials. He performs studies of interfaces, surfaces, defects and impurities, and has worked on wide-band-gap semiconductors, nitrides, oxides, hydrogen interactions with materials, and spin centers for quantum information science.  He has published over 400 research papers and holds 24 patents.  Van de Walle is a Member of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering. 

Dr Julita Smalc-Koziorowska – Laboratory of Semiconductor Characterization

Julita Smalc-Koziorowska received her PhD in Material Science in 2013 from Warsaw University of Technology. Since her master thesis she is cooperating with the Institute of High Pressure Physics PAS „Unipress”, where she is employed as an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Semiconductor Characterization. Since 2010 she also works as technologist at Top GaN Ltd – a company producing gallium nitride laser diodes. Her research interests span transmission electron microscopy charaterization of semiconductor structures with a special focus on tracking the mechanism of defect introduction in epitaxial nitride layers. Recently, she studied the mechanism of threading dislocation introduction from stacking fault domains in such layers.