Plenary talks
Markus Gühr
Markus Guehr is a senior scientist at DESY, appointed jointly with the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg. As head of the free electron laser FLASH, Markus is responsible for the world's first SASE X-ray laser, which has been working as a user facility since 2005 and whose research potential is currently being further improved with the FLASH2020+ expansion project.Alessia Pasquazi
Prof. Alessia Pasquazi received her PhD in Electronic Engineering from Roma Tre University in 2009. She was a MELS Fellow in Québec, Canada, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, and subsequently held a UKRI Innovation Fellowship. From 2014 to 2022 she was a faculty member at the University of Sussex, where she co-founded the Emergent Photonics Laboratory. She is currently Full Professor in Nonlinear Optics at Loughborough University and Director of the Emergent Photonics Research Centre (EPicX).
Her research focuses on nonlinear and ultrafast photonics, with particular emphasis on laser cavity solitons, integrated optical frequency combs, terahertz photonics and quantum-enabled photonic systems. Her work has contributed to the development of laser-cavity-soliton microcombs, self-emergent nonlinear states and compact photonic sources for precision timing and quantum technologies.
François Courvoisier
Francois Courvoisier is research director at CNRS and heads the Optics Department of the FEMTO-ST Institute in Besancon, France. He graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France. He received his PhD degree from University Lyon 1, in ultrafast spectroscopy of biomolecules. After a postdoc in the Group of Applied Physics, Geneva on coherent control, he joined CNRS in 2006 within FEMTO-ST institute in Besancon, France. He particularly pioneered femtosecond laser beam shaping for high aspect ratio nano-structuring. He was awarded the Aimé Cotton Prize of the French Physical Society and received an ERC-Consolidator grant in 2015.
Keynote talks
Javier García de Abajo
Javier García de Abajo is an ICREA Research Professor and head of the Nanophotonics Theory Group at ICFO–Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques in Barcelona. His interests include electron microscopy, light-matter interactions, quantum optics, condensed matter physics, ultrafast phenomena, and nanophotonics. His group applies theoretical and computational techniques to investigate new nanoscale phenomena and explore their potential application in microscopy, sensing, and information processing. See https://www.nanophotonics.org for more details.Clara Saraceno
Clara Saraceno was born in 1983 in Argentina. In 2007 she completed a Diploma in Engineering and an MSc at the Institut d’Optique Graduate School, Paris. After finishing her studies, she was an Engineering Trainee at Coherent, Santa Clara, CA from 2007 to 2008. She completed a PhD in Physics at ETH Zürich, Switzerland in 2012 in the group of Prof. Ursula Keller, where she carried out research on ultrafast disk lasers. She received the ETH Medal for her PhD thesis and the European Physical Society (Quantum Electronics and Optics Division) thesis prize in applied aspects in 2013. From 2013-2014, she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Neuchatel and ETH Zürich, followed by a postdoc position from 2015 – 2016 at ETH Zürich.
In 2016, she received a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and became Associate Professor of Photonics and Ultrafast Science in the Electrical Engineering Faculty at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. In 2018 she received an ERC Starting Grant, and in 2024 an ERC Consolidator Grant. She is a Fellow of Optica in the class of 2022.
Since 2020, she is a full professor at the Ruhr University in Bochum and the current main research topics of her group include high-power ultrafast lasers and Terahertz science and technology. Her group also houses a spin-off ‘Rayven’ that aims to commercialize novel 2.1µm ultrafast laser technology.
Luis Arnaut
Full Professor at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Founding Director of the Coimbra LaserLab recognised by the Portuguese Science Foundations as a research infrastructure of strategic interest and member of LaserLab Europe – the Integrated Initiative of European Laser Research Infrastructures. Luis Arnaut is the Vice-Chair of LaserLab Europe General Assembly and member of its Executive Committee. Editor of Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences, published by Springer Nature, and official journal of the European Society for Photobiology and the European Photochemistry Association. Authored >200 Web of Science papers with >10000 Google Scholar citations and h-index >50. Included in the Stanford/Elsevier list of “World’s Top 2% Scientists” since 2022. Author of 3 books. Inventor of 10 patent families, 8 of them licensed to Pharma/Biotech companies and granted as >100 National patents worldwide. Recipient of 6 awards, including some for the most prestigious awards in Portugal (Gulbenkian Foundation, Portuguese Institute of Industrial Property). His broad scientific interests embrace chemical reactivity, photodynamic therapy and photoacoustics.Invited talks
- Fernando Ardana (ICFO)
- Majed Chergui (FERMI, Italy)
- Marcos Dantus (Michigan State University)
- Marta Fajardo (IST, Universidade de Lisboa)
- Sandra Gómez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
- Ana Isabel Gómez-Varela (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
- Cruz Méndez (Centro de Láseres Pulsados)
- Carlos Molpeceres (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
- Jana Nieder (International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory)
- Hugo Pires (IST, Universidade de Lisboa)
- Daniel Puerto García (Universidad de Alicante)
- Laura Rego (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid)
- Rosa Romero Muñiz (Universidade Oporto, Sphere Photonics)
- Elisabet Romero (Instituto Catalán de Investigación Química)
- Íñigo Sola (Universidad de Salamanca)
- Belén Sotillo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)