Riccardo RattazziRiccardo Rattazzi was born in Novara (Italy) in 1964. He studied physics at the University of Pisa, where he received the Laurea cum laude in 1987, and at the Scuola Normale Superiore where he received the Diploma in Scienze and carried out graduate research in theoretical physics. After having been a post-doctoral research associate at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, at Rutgers University and at CERN, in 1998 Riccardo obtained a permanent research position at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Pisa. From 2001 to 2006 he was a staff member at the Theory Division of CERN. In 2006 he was appointed professor of physics at EPFL.
Xile HuXile Hu was born in 1978 in Putian, southeastern China. He entered the Peking University in Beijing in 1996. Besides learning too little chemistry, his biggest regret in the college was not able to correct his southern accent in Mandarin. After graduated from PKU, he went to the United States and began his doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. In December 2004, he finished with a Ph.D. in chemistry and some fond memories of the beautiful city of San Diego. He then moved to the Los Angeles area and become a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. There he enjoyed numerous stimulating scientific (and other) discussions with friends and colleagues. He also made plenty of friends outside the campus and was a frequent in many local Chinese restaurants. In 2007, after two pleasant visits to Switzerland, he decided to move across the continent one more time and join the faculty of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He now directs the Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis and is interested in developing chemistry for synthesis, energy and sustainability.
Tobias KippenbergTobias J. Kippenberg is Full Professor of Physics at EPFL and leads the Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurement. He obtained his BA at the RWTH Aachen, and MA and PhD at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech in Pasadena, USA). From 2005- 2009 he lead an Independent Research Group at the MPI of Quantum Optics, and is at EPFL since. His research interest are the Science and Applications of ultra high Q microcavities; in particular with his research group he discovered chip-scale Kerr frequency comb generation (Nature 2007, Science 2011) and observed radiation pressure backaction effects in microresonators that now developed into the field of cavity optomechanics (Science 2008). Tobias Kippenberg is alumni of the “Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes”. For his invention of “chip-scale frequency combs” he received he Helmholtz Price for Metrology (2009) and the EFTF Young Investigator Award (2010). For his research on cavity optomechanics, he received the EPS Fresnel Prize (2009). In addition he is recipient of the ICO Prize in Optics (2014), the Swiss National Latsis award (2015), the German Wilhelm Klung Award (2015) and ZEISS Research Award (2018). He is fellow of the APS and OSA, and listed since 2014 in the Thomas Reuters highlycited.com in the domain of Physics. EDUCATION 2009: Habilitation (Venia Legendi) in Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2004: PhD, California Institute of Technology (Advisor Professor Kerry Vahala) 2000: Master of Science (Applied Physics), California Institute of Technology 1998: BA in Physics, Technical University of Aachen (RWTH), Germany 1998: BA in Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Aachen (RWTH), Germany ACADEMIC POSITIONS 2013 - present: Full Professor EPFL 2010 - 2012: Associate Professor EPFL 2008 - 2010: Tenure Track Assistant Professor, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne 2007 - present: Marie Curie Excellent Grant Team Leader, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Division of Prof.T.W. Hänsch) 2005 - present: Leader of an Independent Junior Research Group, Max Planck Institute 2005- present: Habilitant (Prof. Hänsch) Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) 2005-2006: Postdoctoral Scholar, Center for the Physics of Information, California Institute of Technology 2000-2004: Graduate Research Assistant, California Institute of Technology PRIZES AND HONORS: ZEISS Research Award 2018 Fellow of the APS 2016 Klung-Wilhelmy Prize 2015 Swiss Latsis Prize 2014 Selected Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in Physics, 2014/2015 ICO Prize, 2013 EFTF Young Scientist Award (for "invention of microresonator based frequency combs") 2010 Fresnel Prize of the European Physical Society (for contributions to Optomechanics) 2009 Helmholtz Prize for Metrology (for invention of the monolithic frequency comb) 2009 1st Prize winner of the EU Contest for Young Scientists, Helsinki, Finland. Sept. 1996 Jugend forscht 1st Physics Prize at the German National Science Contest May 1996 FELLOWSHIPS Fellow of the German National Merit Foundation ("Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes") 1998-2002 Member of the Daimler-Chysler-Fellowship-Organization 1998-2002 Dr. Ulderup Fellowship 1999-2000 RESEARCH INTERESTS Experimental and theoretical research in photonics, notably high Q optical microcavities and their use in cavity quantum optomechanics and frequency metrology PUBLICATIONS AND OFTEN CITED METRICS*: >70 Publications in peer reviewed journals Researcher Google Profile: http://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=PRCbG2kAAAAJ&hl=en h-Index 54 (Google scholar H: 64, >25,000 citations) Thomson Reuters/Claravite List of Highly Cited Researchers (2014,2015,2016,2017) careful in its use: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201411/backpage.cfm KEY PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS: A. Ghadimi, et al. Elastic strain engineering for ultra high Q nanomechanical oscillators Science, (2018) Trocha, et al. Ultrafast distance measurements using soliton microresonator frequency combs Science, Vol. 359 (2018) [joint work with C. Koos] Pablo-Marin et al. Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications Nature (2017) [joint work with C. Koos] V. Brasch, et al. Photonic chip-based optical frequency comb using soliton Cherenkov radiation. Science, vol. 351, num. 6271 (2015) Aspelmeyer, M., Kippenberg, T. J. & Marquardt, F. Cavity optomechanics. Reviews of Modern Physics 86, 1391-1452, (2014) Wilson, D. J. et al. Measurement and control of a mechanical oscillator at its thermal decoherence rate. Nature (2014). Verhagen, E., Deleglise, S., Weis, S., Schliesser, A. & Kippenberg, T. J. Quantum-coherent coupling of a mechanical oscillator to an optical cavity mode. Nature 482, 63-67 (2012). Kippenberg, T. J., Holzwarth, R. & Diddams, S. A. Microresonator-based optical frequency combs. Science 332, 555-559, (2011). Weis, S. et al. Optomechanically induced transparency. Science 330, 1520-1523 (2010). Kippenberg, T. J. & Vahala, K. J. Cavity optomechanics: back-action at the mesoscale. Science 321, 1172-1176, (2008). Del'Haye, P. et al. Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator. Nature (2007) Schliesser, A., DelHaye, P., Nooshi, N., Vahala, K. & Kippenberg, T. Radiation Pressure Cooling of a Micromechanical Oscillator Using Dynamical Backaction. Physical Review Letters 97, (2006). Ivica ZivkovicTeaching & PhD PhD Students Berna Esmer Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Virgile Favre, Bhushan Hegde, Yikai Yang Courses Magnetism in materials PHYS-491 The lectures will provide an introduction to magnetism in materials, covering fundamentals of spin and orbital degrees of freedom, interactions between moments and some typical ordering patterns. Selected experimental techniques and their application in current research will be presented.
Frédéric BlancExpertise
High Energy Physics
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Rita De Sousa Ataíde Da Silva, Dimitrios Kaminaris, Maria Carolina Feliciano Faria Past EPFL PhD Students Lino Ferreira Lopes, Vladimir Macko, Guillaume Max Pietrzyk Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Jessica Prisciandaro, Giovanni Veneziano, Sebastiana Gianì, Lino Ferreira Lopes, Guillaume Max Pietrzyk Courses Selected topics in nuclear and particle physics PHYS-400 This course presents the physical principles and the recent rese
Matthew WodrichPublications 96) "Diastereoselective Synthesis of Housanes via the Carbocupration of Cyclopropenes"C. Tanguy, V. Smyrnov, M.D. Wodrich, J. WaserJournal of the American Chemical Society 2026, 148, 15265-15273. [LINK]95) "Accessing CF3-Cyclopropenes - A Platform for the Synthesis of Trifluoromethylated Building Blocks"W. Wu, T. M. Milzarek, M.D. Wodrich, J. WaserOrganic Letters 2026, 28, 3730-3735. [LINK]94) "Regio- and Enantioselective Pictet-Spengler Reaction of a-Diketones Catalyzed by a Single H-Bond Dono
Anne-Clémence CorminboeufTeaching & PhD PhD Students Liam Oliver Marsh, Pratham Pushparaj Deshmukh, Roel Christiaan M Raike, Thanapat Worakul, Osvaldo Hernandez Cuellar, Juliette Veronique Schleicher, Yannick Calvino Alonso, Sara Bassetta, Yuri Cho, Kelian Dietmar Marc Gaedecke, Guoyuan Liu Past EPFL PhD Students Fabrice Avaltroni, Daniel Filipe Jana, Stephan Niklaus Steinmann, Jérôme Florian Gonthier, Riccardo Petraglia, Antonio Prlj, Laurent Alexis Clément Vannay, Alberto Fabrizio, Kun-Han Lin, Boodsarin Sawatlon, Raimon Fabreg
Leonid RivkinBorn in Odessa in 1954. Studied physics in Novosibirsk and Cambridge USA, graduated from Harvard University with AB in Physics in 1978. PhD in Physics from Caltech in 1985. Worked on several accelerator projects at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, followed by a year at LEP, CERN, Geneva.
Joined the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) near Zürich in 1989 and worked on the design, construction and commissioning of the Swiss Light Source.
PSI Deputy Director, since 2006 the Head of the Department of Large Research Facilities at PSI and professor of particle accelerator physics at EPFL.
Currently serving on several international advisory committees and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
