Category Archives: Alumni

Hector Mas of the Bec - Cretan Matter Waves Group

Hector Mas

06/2014 – 07/2019 PhD Student on BEC1
10/2013 – 06/2014 Internship on BEC 1

After a postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, he is now in the Weld Group at the UC Santa Barbara, California.

06/2014 to 07/2019 PhD Student on BEC 1 

10/2013 to 06/2014 Intern on BEC 1 
09/2012 to 09/2013 MsC in photonics at the Optics Laboratory of the University of Vigo 
Hector did his MSc at the Optics Laboratory of the University of Vigo at Ourense Campus, where he worked on the optimization of the photonic gauge for XHV under the supervision of Ángel Paredes.
10/2008 to 10/2012 Undergraduate at the University of Valencia
Hèctor graduated from the University of Valencia in 2012 and he went right after to Galicia to start a MsC in photonics at the Optics Laboratory of the University of Vigo at Ourense Campus. His last incursion in physics was a collaboration in the theoretical development of the Photonic Gauge of XHV.
 09/2008 to 09/2012 Undergraduate at the University of Valencia 
 Hèctor did his undergraduate studies at the Physics Faculty of the Universitat de València. There he also had a short internship at Energesis Group.

Debapriya Pal

07/2020-  to date Ph.D. student at AMOLF and the University of Amsterdam
09/2019-06/2020  Research Assistant on CEMIC and OBST2
05/2018-07/2018 Intern on laser-fiber optics

Deba worked mainly on OBST2. He took active participation in building the breadboard and the instrument control for measurements. He also took part in preliminary theoretical calculations and ZEMAX simulations for imaging systems for CEMIC.

From July 1st, 2020, he joined as a Ph.D. student in the Resonant Nanophotonics Group at AMOLF, Amsterdam, in a collaborative project of AMOLF, TU/e, and the LED-company Lumileds to improve next-generation solid-state lighting. He will receive his Ph.D. degree from the University of Amsterdam after completion.

In 2018 Debapriya Pal worked on an intern project to build a novel fiber-coupled slave laser.  He pursued the 5-year BS-MS Dual Degree Program in Physics at the Indian Institute of Science and Research Education, Kolkata (India) under Prof. Ayan Banerjee. During his master thesis, he explored the spin-orbit interaction of tightly focused light beams in optical tweezers using angular spectrum representation, designed with a stratified medium in the path of the trapping beam.

Debapriya Pal was awarded the prestigious  2018 Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship by the international society for optics and photonics SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics for his potential contributions to the field of optics, photonics, or related field.

He is now his Ph.D. student in the group of Femius Koenderink  working on Resonant Nanophotonics.

Anamika Nair Karunakaran

05/2016-08/2016 Intern on an LabView project

Anamika joined us from the Cochin University of Science and Technology South Kalamassery in Kerala, India. She went on to do her master in the Quantum Information with Cold Atoms and Non-classical Light Group of Morgan Mitchel at the ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain. She is now working on her PhD at the Technical University of Denmark in collaboration with the laser manufacturer NKT Photonics. She will be part of the EU project  ETN-MEFISTA (Multi-scale fibre-based optical frequency combs: science, technology and applications).

She has successfully defended her PhD at the University of Delft. Her topic was “Investigations of microresonator ­based frequency combs”

Her Linked-in page is here.

Giorgos Vasilakis

01/2020 – today Research group leader at IESL-FORTH
06/2016 – 06/2018 Marie Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellow on BEC
02/2016 – 05/2016 Visiting Scientist

Before joining us Georgos was…

2012 – 2016 PostDoc at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Georgo was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Quantop Group of Eugene S. Polzik at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. He was working on Experimental quantum optics / Light-atom quantum interface.

2006 – 2011 PhD at Princeton University, NJ under the supervision of Michael V. Romalis. The topic of his PhD thesis was: “Precision Measurements of Spin Interactions with High Density Atomic Vapors”

2003-2006 Master at Princeton University

2002-2003 Graduate program in Optoelectronics and Microelectronics, University of Crete

1997-2002 B.S. in Physics University of Crete

Picture of Iván Alonso Miguel

Ivan Alonso Miguel

06/2015 – 10/2016 Postdoc on BEC 2

During his postdoc on Crete he worked on the stability of BEC and its phase fluctuations as well as the “Q-factor”.

Before joining us, Ivan did his MsC in Instrumentation in Physics followed by his PhD at the Applied Physics Department of the University of Salamanca and the University of Salamanca. During this period he worked on the Equilibrium Thermodynamic characterization of liquids, liquid mixtures, the microscopic interpretation of the data via well-known statistical models based on the Guggenheim (quasi-Ising) lattice model, Flory equation of state and contribution group methods like DISQUAC and UNIFAC.

After doing a postdoc at the University of Burgos, Ivan is now a  Professor at the Universitat de les Illes Balears.

Giannis Drougakis

Alumnus Postdoc
10/2021 – 7/2024 Postdoc on BEC 1 and Space Optics
11/2016 – 10/2021 PhD Student on BEC 1 and OBST
03/2015 – 10/2016 Master Student on the ESA-OBST project

Giannis joined the Cretan Matter Waves group in March 2015 to work on the ESA-OBST project. He holds a diploma in electrical and computer engineering (2012) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He received his master’s degree from the inter-institutional graduate program “Vision and Optics”, of the University of Crete finishing his master thesis entitled “Vibrational and angular stability of optical systems for space applications” in December 2015. He continued for his PhD working on BEC 1 and OBST, graduating in October 2021. He is now a postdoc on BEC 1 and OBST. He is going to be the head of telecommunications at the airport in Heraklion and will be in charge of this topic at the new airport in Kastelli

Kostas Poulios

day11/2014 – 07/2017 : postdoc on BEC 1 and Space Optics

Kostas got his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at the Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he majored on Solid State Physics and Optics.

He then started his PhD in 2009 at the Centre for Quantum Photonics, University of Bristol, under the supervision of Prof. Jeremy O’Brien, where he did experimental research on integrated quantum photonics for quantum information and quantum computation science. His main focus was on implementation of multi-photon integrated quantum walks, with dissertation titled: Integrated Photonic Continuous-Time Quantum Walks.

He then did a short post-doc in 2014 still with Prof. Jeremy O’Brien at the Centre for Quantum Photonics, working in a collaboration with Prof. Axel Kuhn’s Atom-Photon Connection group at Oxford University. He was also a visiting post-doctoral research assistant (early 2015) at the Atom-Photon Connection group, Oxford University. The scope of the collaboration was to use a deterministic single photon source (single Rb87 atoms in a cavity) to perform quantum logic experiments on integrated photonic devices.

In November 2014 he joined the Cretan Matter-Waves / Bose-Einstein Condensation group, I.E.S.L., FO.R.T.H. in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, where he is since working as a post-doctoral researcher. His main project is the implementation of a fully-guided, ring-shaped, Sagnac-type atom-interferometer using time-averaged adiabatic potentials (TAAPs) and Rb87 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs).

In summer 2017, Kostas joined the cold atoms group of Thomas Fernholz at Nottingham University.