PARTNERS

A look at the consortium members

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ICFO – Barcelona

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 Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

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POLIMI – Milan

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UoG – Glasgow

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ZEISS – Oberkochen

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MPD – Bolzano

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Fraunhofer, Jena

ICFOIQOQIPOLIMIU. GlasgowMPDZEISSFraunhofer

ICFO, through the Optoelectronics research group led by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Valerio Pruneri, will coordinate the project (WP1) and the assessment of the Q-MIC platform for biological detection (WP5). Valerio Pruneri has coordinated many multi-partner projects, including the H2020 RAIS project (see section 5 below), which developed part of the technology that will be leveraged in Q-MIC. Among the current PI and his group’s activities, the most relevant for the proposed project concern the development of lens-free microscopy based optical sensors. These rely on a CCD and CMOS detection and can be used for different applications, ranging from scattering measurements to material defects, micro-organism, cell analysis and counting, and DNA detection and sequencing. The group and the PI have produced 1 granted patent and 3 patent applications in this area, all relevant and part of the background IP for the project.

Researchers

Valerio Pruneri, Project Coordinator for Q-MIC, is an ICREA Industrial Professor, Corning Inc. chair and group leader at ICFO. He has over 40 granted or pending patent families and 70 invited talks at major international conferences in the field of photonics, optical materials, multifunctional surfaces and quantum optics. His research at ICFO has so far lead to two spin-offs (www.quside.com and www.sixsenso.com). He has been General and Technical co-chair of the Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics (CLEO) Europe in 2017 and 2015, respectively. He is an international R&D advisor of ACREO fiber optic centre in Sweden, member of the advisory board of VLC Photonics, technical advisor of Medlumics SL, member of the EPS-QEOD board. For his research and technology transfer effort, he received the Philip Morris Prize for Scientific and Technological Research, the Pirelli Research Fellowship, the IBM Faculty Award, the Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award, the Duran Farell Prize for Technological Research and the Corning Inc. Chair.

Álvaro Cuevas is a physicist specialized in quantum optics. He has obtained his Bachellor and Master degrees in physics at University of Concepción, Chile. Later he obtained his PhD in physics at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, where he worked in the group lead by professor Paolo Mataloni. His experience ranges from bulk and integrated photonics for simulation of quantum walks and open quantum systems, to light-matter interaction for polaritonics and fundamental quantum mechanics. He has developed characterization techniques for quantum channels and coherence revival protocols, and also he has worked with fiber optic networks for Bell tests. Currently Dr. Álvaro Cuevas has a post-doc position at ICFO as member of the Optoelectronics Group, which is lead by professor Dr. Valerio Pruneri. His work is focused on the development of quantum-enhanced optical microscopy techniques, and quantum generation of random numbers and light modulation in sofisticated materials.

Robin Camphausen is a PhD researcher working in the Optoelectronics group at ICFO under the supervision of Prof. Valerio Pruneri. His research in Q-MIC centres on integrating single photon detector arrays and entangled photon sources with phase-detection microscopy techniques. In the past he worked as a research engineer in the Optoelectronics group. In this capacity he worked on quantum random number generators, second harmonic generation and the optical transfer function of transparent samples, as well as a novel medical imaging device. Robin graduated from the University of Sydney, completing an Honours degree in Physics (First Class) after working in the Nanophotonics and Plasmonics Advancement Lab, where his work focused on confocal microscopy and single photon emitters.Save

Support Staff

Nuria Charles – Harris, ICFO- Coordinated Project Manager. She has a degree in Business Administration from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain and a Master degree in e-Logistics and Supply chain management, from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. Before working in ICFO, she started her career as Engineer Programme Manager in the Fundació Politecnica de Catalunya, later on she became a Logistics Project Manager in Logistics department. She has 4 years experience in International and national projects management in Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomédica. In 2014 she started to work at ICFO in the projects unit in charge of international coordinated projects. She will coordinate the project activities, manage the administrative task, work plan and reportings as well ensure the smooth flow of information between partners and the EC. Together with the Coordinator, she will coordinate the core task and guarantee the quality of Q-MIC.

Marta Sans (PhD- Project manager at ICFO). From 2015 to 2019, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher in Biophysics at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. Since November 2019 she’s part of the Projects Unit at ICFO, where she has been managing FET European coordinated proposals and projects, as for example, the ICFO coordinated Optoelectronics Work Package of the Graphene Flagship, the European Union’s biggest scientific research initiative.

Alina Hirschmann, (Senior Science communication officer at ICFO). She obtained a double B.Sc. degree in Physics and Astrophysics from Florida Institute of Technology- FloridaTech. In 2009, she obtained her PhD degree in Astrophysics from the UPC (Barcelona) through the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC). She has focused her career in Science Communication, obtaining a Master degree in Communication Management in 2018. She has worked as a Science Communicator since 2009. She is currently the Science Communication officer at ICFO and, for Q-MIC, will be coordinating the Communication and Dissemination actions of the project.

Marta Martín (Science Communication officer at ICFO) holds a BSc in Environmental Biology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a MSc in Neurosciences from the University of Barcelona. She started her career as a researcher in evolutionary biology and animal behaviour, focusing on primates. Having communicated and disseminated science both in research institutes and at the university level, she is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in Science Communication. She joins ICFO as a Communications Officer for European Projects.

The team led by Rupert Ursin at the Austrian Academy of Sciences will coordinate the OEAW workload; supervise R&D activities and students, reporting duties, and other contractual obligations with assistance of a deputy PI, Fabian Steinlechner. Building on their prior experience in multi-photon experiments and coincidence detection schemes, both coordinators will be included as consultants in the system specification WP. The team will supervise the assembly of the entangled photon source (WP3) and coordination of WP4.

The main R&D contribution in WP4 will focus on the optical integration and source characterization with assistance and expertise on advanced detection schemes, and data processing. All members of this entity will contribute to the experimental trials, with coordination and supervision by Rupert Ursin.

Researchers

Rupert Ursin has published more than 60 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals such as Science and Nature. He has been experimentally active in numerous international collaborations in Germany, Italy, Spain, USA as well as in Japan. To date, several of his publications were selected as yearly highlights by the British Physics Web and others. In 2008, he received the Award for The Telecommunications Advancement Research Fellowship (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology NICT, Tokyo, Japan) and in 2010, the Christian-Doppler Prize. He has presented invited talks on original scientific results at more than 60 prestigious international conferences. He currently holds a guest professorship at the University of Science and Technology (USTC) in Shanghai, China. (USTC) in Shanghai, China. Leadership. He currently leads one of the first experimental research group (currently about 10 members) in the world working on experiments related to relativistic quantum information, a new and highly competitive field.

Thomas Scheidl was a team leader within the group of Prof. Anton Zeilinger until 2018 and supervised a group of 3 PhD and 2 Master students. In 2017, his team successfully demonstrated, in collaboration with a team from the University of Science and Technology in China, the first-ever intercontinental quantum key exchange between Austria and China using the Chinese Quantum Science Satellite “Micius” as a trusted relay. He sees himself as a creative goal driven researcher who uses the broad spectrum of tools available to pursue both fundamental research and the perfection/maturity of existing state of the art technologies. His main field of research is the experimental investigation of fundamental questions in quantum physics as well as the development of prototypes for secure quantum communications and quantum information, mainly for free-space systems. Thomas Scheidl has been active in many international collaborations and responsible for a number of projects funded by the European Space Agency. He has published more than 20 papers in scientific journals such as in Nature, Nature Physics and Physical Review Letters. In 2012 and 2013 he received Fellowships from the Energie AG (Innovation Fund) and from the Sohmen Far East Foundation for his contribution to the field of long-distance quantum communication.

Matthias Fink joined the research group of Rupert Ursin in 2014 and pursued his master thesis regarding the adaptation of existing optical ground stations for the use in quantum communication experiments using polarized single photons. Just recently, he started his PhD where he focuses now on the implementation of such a receiver in a space platform as well as the required infrastructure on ground.

Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) is one of the largest universities in Italy and it is well acknowledged in Europe as a technical school for engineering. According to the QS World University Rankings, POLIMI is the 25 top Engineering Schools in the world and at the first place among all Italian universities in six scientific areas including Computer Science & Information Systems. POLIMI has a leading experience in research projects, boasting 261 founded projects just in FP7 between 2007 and 2013 (49 as project coordinator) with 22% submitted proposal success rate and 562 projects founded by MIUR between 2001 and 2012 (161 as coordinator). The “SPADlab” research group lead by prof. Franco Zappa has worldwide leadership in Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs), both in Silicon and InGaAs/InP, and both in custom processing and in fully-CMOS standard technologies. Dr. Federica Villa is the senior researcher with mature background in the design and development of SPAD arrays, imagers, and associated instrumentation, as well as in the design and development of microelectronic circuits and electronic boards for photon-counting 2D imaging and photon-timing Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging and 3D LiDAR ranging, through the accurate measurement of the time-of-flight of single photons.

Researchers

Federica Villa was born in 1986 in Milano and she is a researcher on “Sensor Systems” at POLIMI – DEIB (Dip. Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria). Her main research activities aim at developing silicon Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) devices and imagers in CMOS and BCD technologies and to develop systems and instrumentation based on SPADs and Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). In 2010 she interned in the Biochemistry Dept. of UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), and collaborated to develop a high throughput Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy set-up based on SPAD arrays. At present, she is acting as senior microelectronic designer in charge of conceiving and developing microelectronics and SPAD imagers for scientific applications like fluorescence lifetime imaging and correlation spectroscopy and 3D time-of-flight LiDAR ranging. She is co-author of 43 papers on peer-reviewed journals and 39 conference proceedings.

Franco Zappa was born in 1965 in Milano and he is full professor of “Electronic Systems” at POLIMI – DEIB. His main research activities deal with the design and the development of microelectronic circuits and single-photon detectors (SPAD) and CMOS SPAD imagers for the visible and near-infrared wavelength range, for high-sensitivity luminescence measurements, 2D imaging and 3D depth ranging. He designed novel SPAD structures in both Silicon and InGaAs/InP semiconductors, in order to extend the photon-counting techniques up to 1.55µm-wavelengths and beyond. In 1994, he presented and patented the design of the first monolithic Active Quenching Circuit electronics for single-photon detection ever reported. He is co-author of more than 200 papers published in peer-reviewed Journals and in proceedings of international Conferences, and 5 textbooks on “Electronics”, “Electronic Systems”, and “Microcontrollers”. He is co-author of 4 patents.

Founded in 1451, the University of Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of the top 100 of the world’s universities. UofG was also named Scottish University of the Year by The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018. It includes among its alumni, the father of economics Adam Smith and renowned physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin. UofG currently hosts around 28,000 students and has identified 6 major “research beacons”, of which one is the “quantum and nano-world”. UofG plays a leading role in the development of quantum technologies within the UK is the lead institution for the UK Quantum Technologies Hub for Imaging, QuantIC. The UofG researchers involved in QMIC work in the school of Physics of Astronomy.

Researchers

Daniele Faccio, joined the University of Glasgow in 2017 as Professor in Quantum Technologies and is adjunct professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson (USA). From 2013-2017, he was professor at Heriot-Watt University from 2013 where he was also deputy director of the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017. He has been visiting scientist at MIT (USA), Marie-Curie fellow at ICFO, Barcelona (Spain) and EU-ERC fellow 2012-2017. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Physics in 2015, the Royal Society of Edinburgh Senior Public Engagement medal and the Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award in 2017. He worked in the optical telecommunications industry for four years before obtaining his PhD in Physics in 2007 at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis. He currently leads the Extreme Light group that usually hosts more about 15 researchers (PhD and post-doc). He has published in more than 140 research articles including Nature Communications, Nature Photonics, Science and Physical Review Letters with an H-index of 41 (2018). His research in the area of quantum imaging and active-imaging has recently provided the first demonstration of light-in-flight in free space [Nat. Commun. 6, 6021 (2015)] and tracking of objects hidden from view [Nat. Photonics 10, 23 (2016)].

His research is funded by the UK research council EPSRC the Quantum Technology Centre for Imaging (QuantIC), DSTL, Thales, The Leverhulme Trust and the EU Fe-Open and Quantum Flagship.

Ashley Lyons, currently a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow within the Extreme Light group led by Prof. Daniele Faccio. After completion of his MPhys he joined the Extreme Light group at Heriot-Watt University to study for a PhD in nonlinear and quantum optics which he completed in the summer of 2017. He then remained with the group as a PDRA and transitioned over to the University of Glasgow in 2017 funded by the UK research council EPSRC the Quantum Technology Centre for Imaging (QuantIC). His primary research interests are novel quantum optics experiments with 2D metadevices, quantum imaging, and time-of-flight imaging methods. His published works include first author papers on high precision Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry [Science Advances 4, 1 (2017)] and group velocity measurements of photons carrying Orbital Angular Momentum [Optica, 5, 6, 682 (2018)].

MPD will contribute mainly in the design and development of the compact detection module, which employs the CMOS SPAD chip developed and fabricated by partner POLIMI. Thanks to its expertise in the field, MPD will be responsible for the design of the electronic boards, and the assembly/testing of the detection imaging sensor chip. The formers will be equipped with programmable electronics, like microcontrollers and FPGA, in order to: i) set parameters into the SPAD array; ii) read-out data from the chip; iii) upload them to a remote computer through an USB link. As typically provided in MPD commercial products, a fully featured control software and software library will be developed. This will allow to directly accessing raw data provided by the detection array or a pre-processed version, given by the FPGA.

Researchers

Simone Tisa is now Product R&D Manager for electronics design and system integration at MPD. In 2008 he pioneered the first monolithic 2-D SPAD imager of 32 32 pixels. His main research interests are in the field of single-photon imaging and single-photon timing of fast phenomena, by means of fully integrated arrays of SPADs and associated microelectronics.

Alessandro Ruggeri is a R&D electronic circuit designer at Micro Photon Devices. He was a research Assistant with the Dip. Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria at Politecnico di Milano. In 2012, he graduated in the Master in Electronic Engineering and in 2015, he attained the Ph.D. in Information Technology Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. In summer 2014, he was with the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, where he was involved in optical testing of ULSI circuits. His main research activity deals with the development of electronics for visible and near-infrared single-photon avalanche diodes, for biomedical and communication applications.

Andrea Giudice, CTO, an expert in the design, validation, and characterization of electronic devices and circuits. In 1997, he was a summer student at National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC), Cork, Ireland, where he designed and tested avalanche photodiodes for single-photon detection. Deep know-how in single-photon detectors and applications gained during his Ph.D. at the Department of Electronics and Information of Politecnico di Milano within Prof. Cova’s group and during its work as MPD’s research engineer.

Georg Simmerle is an expert in module assembling, prototype and production testing, system integration and quality assurance procedures. He is in charge of assembling and testing of photon counting and timing modules currently developed by MPD.

ZEISS is an international leader in the fields of optics and optoelectronics. ZEISS has been contributing to technological progress for 170 years – with solutions for the semiconductor, automotive and mechanical engineering industries, biomedical research and medical technology, as well as eyeglass lenses, camera and cine lenses, binoculars and planetariums.

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Ulrich Vogl obtained his PhD in Bonn in 2010. He spent time as postdoc and project leader at NIST/Gaithersburg and the Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen. In 2017 he joined ZEISS as developer for EUV systems and oversaw projects on additive manufacturing and automatization. Since 2018 he is working on quantum technologies in the Corporate Research and Technology department of ZEISS with a focus on quantum imaging applications.

Nils Trautmann received his PhD in physics from the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he investigated the interaction between light and matter for quantum information processing. He joined ZEISS in the department for strategic business development of the business group for semiconductor manufacturing technology. He is currently heading the ZEISS activities on quantum technology.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering – IOF, in Jena is a pioneer in the field of applied research for optical quantum technologies. Fraunhofer IOF offers innovative solutions for applications in science and industry wherever quantum-technological systems have the potential to enable revolutionary applications. These can be, for example, tap-proof quantum communication, low-noise quantum imaging or advanced ion traps for quantum computers. We are able to integrate, miniaturize and optimize systems for this purpose. Our competences cover the entire quantum photonic process chain from modelling to system production – from basic physics to ready-to-use prototypes.

Depending on the area of application, we offer our customers individually flexible solutions. In the field of quantum communication, this ranges from space-capable high-performance sources for entangled photons, to complete photonic system solutions based on adaptive optics, to lightweight telescopes for space and ground systems.

As the coordinator of the Fraunhofer-Leitprojekt QUILT, Fraunhofer IOF also has outstanding expertise in quantum imaging. We develop high-power sources for photon pairs with the widest possible wavelength spread and wavelengths from the infrared to the ultraviolet range. Our system solutions open up new application fields in low-light imaging as well as in previously untapped wavelength ranges and expand the portfolio of microscopic and telescopic imaging methods.

Researchers

Fabian Steinlechner received his PhD in Photonics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in 2015. His research focuses on developing efficient methods for generating and manipulating quantum states of light and their application in long-distance quantum communications and quantum sensing. During his PhD in the ICFO Optoelectronics group of Valerio Pruneri and later his postdoctoral research in the Experimental Quantum Information Group of Dr. Rupert Ursin at the Vienna Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, he contributed both to foundational quantum experiments, such as a loop-hole free Bell test and tests of quantum theory in extreme environments, as well as quantum technology development, in particular quantum communication field trials over long-distance free-space and fiber links as well as proof-of-concept experiments related to high-dimensional quantum information processing.

In August 2018 he was appointed junior group leader of the “Photonic Quantum Communication Group” at the Fraunhofer IOF, as part of the Fraunhofer Attract Programme. The aim of this group is to bridge the gap between basic science and engineering by combining quantum optics expertise with the core competences in applied optics, in particular integration technologies at Fraunhofer IOF.

Erik Beckert is an expert in precision assembly and system integration. Since 2005 he is a group leader and core competence representative at Fraunhofer IOF and has initiated and/ or lead various public funded and direct industry contract based projects for these topics. Amongst those are ESA funded studies about the precision integration of opto-mechanical and laser-optical systems by means of optics soldering techniques. Latest examples are the successful delivery of green laser flight models for the Raman experiment of the EXOMARS mission and the Engineering Qualification Model of a space-suitable entangled photon source.

Markus Gräfe obtained his PhD in Physics from Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in 2017. He is currently a senior scientist at the Fraunhofer IOF, where he aims to transfer fundamental quantum physical principles to ready-to-use high-tech applications. During his PhD research he gained expert knowledge in the field of quantum walks, quantum simulation and computation in integrated-photonic devices. As the project leader of the Fraunhofer Key Research Initiative “Quantum Methods for Advanced Imaging Solutions” he focuses on quantum imaging as well as on engineering entangled photon-pair sources for quantum communication satellites. So far, he has published more than 20 papers in high-class scientific journals such as Nature Photonics, Nature Communications and Physical Review Letters.