Program
- 14:00h Valerio Pruneri (ICFO) – Welcome
- 14:10h Dries van Thourhout (UGent-imec) – Novel materials and processes for silicon photonics
- 14:50h Georgia Papadakis (ICFO) – Active near-IR and mid-IR materials for temperature regulation in buildings
- 15:30h Martina D’Andrea (ICFO) – Light management strategies to address radiative recombination and enhance the open circuit voltage in perovskite solar cells
- 16:10h TBD
- 16:50h Iliyan Karadzhov (ICFO) – Durable multifunctional micro-nano-structured surfaces for optoelectronics industry<
- 17:20h Alessia Mezzadrelli (ICFO) – Optical surfaces for display with application-specific functionalities
- 17:50h Valerio Pruneri – Final remarks
Speakers
Dr. Dries Van Thourhout (UGent-imec)
Dr. Dries Van Thourhout received the degree in physical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium in 1995 and 2000 respectively. From Oct. 2000 to Sep. 2002 he was with Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories, New Jersey, USA, working on the design, processing and characterization of InP/InGaAsP monolithically integrated devices. In Oct. 2002 he joined the Department of Information Technology (INTEC), Ghent University, Belgium. Since 2008 he has a position as full time professor. He is lecturer for 5 courses (Microphotonics, Advanced Photonics Laboratory, Photonic Semiconductor Components and Technology, Advanced Electronic and Photonic Devices). Currently he is chair of the photonics research group and coordinator of the NAMIFAB centre of expertise. His research focuses on the design, fabrication and characterization of integrated photonic devices. Main topics involve Silicon nanophotonic devices and the integration of novel materials (III-V, graphene, ferro-electrics, quantum dots, …) on these waveguides to expand their functionality. He is working on applications for telecom, datacom, optical interconnect and sensing.
Dr. Georgia Papadakis (ICFO)
Dr. Georgia Papadakis studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens. In 2011, she moved to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where she worked on radio frequency particle accelerators. In 2012 she joined the California Institute of Technology from where she received her PhD in Applied Physics in 2018. Georgia’s PhD work investigated light-matter interactions in nanostructures and two-dimensional materials. She did her postdoctoral studies at Stanford University during 2018-2021, in the group of S. Fan. At Stanford, Georgia worked on radiative heat transfer for renewable energy applications. Georgia joined ICFO in July 2021 as a group leader, where she works on harnessing thermal radiation for heat-to-electricity energy conversion, lighting, and sensing. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Tomkat Postdoctoral Fellowship on Sustainable Energy at Stanford University, the la Caixa postdoctoral research fellowship, and the 2023 Nanophotonics Journal Early Career award.
Martina d’Andrea (ICFO)
Martina d’Andrea completed her undergraduate and Master’s studies in Physics at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Italy), where she specialized in Condensed Matter. Following her Master’s degree, she began exploring ways to apply her academic background to practical challenges in sustainable energy. In 2023, Martina joined the Organic Nanostructured Photovoltaics group at ICFO led by Prof. Jordi Martorell. Her doctoral research focuses on the integration of one-dimensional and three-dimensional photonic structures into perovskite solar cells to improve their optical performance. The project aims to address radiative recombination and enhance the open-circuit voltage by developing and characterizing novel light management strategies. Through precise nano-photonic design and fabrication, the goal is to reduce optical losses and improve energy conversion efficiency—contributing to the advancement of next-generation photovoltaic technologies.
Iliyan Karadzhov (ICFO)
Iliyan Karadzhov obtained his Master’s degree in Photonics in 2020 from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, where he completed his thesis on the interaction of two-dimensional (2D) materials with organic semiconductor monolayers. In 2021, he joined The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) as a doctoral researcher in the Optoelectronics group led by Prof. Valerio Pruneri. His research focuses on developing mass-scalable methods for nanostructuring glass surfaces to achieve advanced antireflective properties, improved mechanical durability, and multifunctional capabilities such as self-cleaning and antimicrobial behavior. His work contributes to the design of next-generation optical surfaces for applications in energy, photonics, and biomedicine.
Alessia Mezzadrelli (ICFO)
Alessia Mezzadrelli completed her undergraduate studies in Material Science at the University of Padova (Italy) in 2015. She continued with a Master of Science (Material Science) at the same university, focusing on Nanofabrication and Optics. In 2017, Alessia defended the thesis on nanofabricated metasurfaces for controlling the orbital angular momentum of light. Then she worked for almost 5 years in non-academic realities, joining at first time a startup and then a company, till when she joined ICFO in 2022 as NANO-GLASS project early stage researcher (ESR2), in the Optoelectronics group of Valerio Pruneri as a PhD student. Her research centers on the development of optical surfaces for display with application-specific functionalities.
Information
Date
16th July 2025
14:00h
Place
Mir-Puig Seminar Room (MP210)
Mir-Puig Building
Castelldefels
Online Access
Follow the workshop online from here
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement nº 956419