New secondments for Alessia, Davide, and Susana

Three of the four NANO-GLASS project’s early-stage researchers (ESRs) are currently undertaking their second secondment at Corning’s Sullivan Park Research and Development facility in NY, USA. Alessia Mezzadrelli (ESR2), Davide Rizzotti (ESR3), and Susana Plascencia (ESR4) have embarked on this exciting journey.

Susana started her secondment in November 2023, immediately following the presentation of her PhD proposal. Her stay at Corning will extend until March 2024. “During these months here, I am closely collaborating with one of Corning’s research fellows, Karl Koch and supervised by research associate, Stuart Gray. Based on our results of the spectroscopic experiments, the goal is to determine which is the best sample to do the quantum memory protocol,” explained Susana.

“This secondment presents a unique opportunity for me to delve deeper into low-temperature properties of the erbium ions in glasses, and their behavior depending on the glass composition,” remarked Susana.

Alessia and Davide began their second secondment at Corning in January 2024 and will conclude their stays in June 2024. Alessia’s current secondment is primarily focused on the design and fabrication of transparent electrodes to be used in several applications from the touch-screens to solar panels. She is under the mentorship of Prantik Mazumder, research fellow who guides her through her research tasks to move forward on her project.

“This year’s secondment is providing me with the chance to explore other fabrication techniques and have the possibility to study in more detail the topic related to transparent electrodes, essential for many applications” Alessia noted.

Davide collaborates closely with research fellow, Bill Miller’s team and is supervised by Stuart Gray. This time, Davide’s focus lies on the improvement of the fabrication technique developed during the last secondment. In specific, the aim is to reduce the losses to get an efficient device.

As Davide explained, “this stay offers me the opportunity to dig deeper into the various processes happening during fabrication. It is particularly interesting to study each material response to a broad range of temperatures and their mutual interaction that leads to the formation of the final device.”

Secondments entail ESRs gaining hands-on experience in different research environments, expanding their knowledge and skills.