Finding the limits of enantiomeric separation using chiral light

Alejandro Martínez

Professor at Universitat Politècnica de Valencia

Alejandro Martínez received the Telecommunications Engineer BsC and PhD degrees from the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia (UPV), Spain, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Since 2004, he has been engaged to this university in different positions, becoming full Professor in December 2017. He is leading the “Plasmonics, optomechanics and chiral photonics” group at the Nanophotonics Technology Center at the same university. The main interest of this group is to develop new nanophotonic devices to be integrated into silicon photonic integrated circuits for applications in telecom systems and biosensing. He has co-authored over 150 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and holds 8 patents. He has also given invited talks (> 10) at international conferences. He has supervised 9 doctoral theses and more than 30 Master theses. He has been the principal investigator of several European (TAILPHOX, GAIA, THOR, SIOMO, SAPHER, MUSICIAN and CHIRALFORCE) and national projects. He is also member of IEEE, AAAS and Optica.

Elena Pinilla

Associate professor

Elena Pinilla-Cienfuegos is a distinguished researcher at the Nanophotonics Technology Center (NTC) of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), specializing in nanoscience, nanotechnology, and scanning probe microscopy (SPM). She leads the «Novel Nanomaterials for Nanophotonics» research group, managing projects focused on integrating nanomaterials into reconfigurable optical devices for telecommunications and biomedicine. She is also involved in projects related to molecular optomechanics and the study of light chirality in integrated photonic systems. EPC has published extensively in high-impact journals, advancing both nanomaterial characterization and their integration into nanophotonic devices.
Her research has significant implications for the biomedical industry, including patents and knowledge transfer. She has supervised more than 25 early career researchers and is actively involved in outreach and gender equality initiatives. EPC holds prominent roles in scientific societies, including as Vice-President of the Spanish Royal Physics Society, and she is currently Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the School of Telecommunication Engineering at the UPV.

Iago Diez

Postdoctoral researcher

Iago Diez has a background in Physics (BSc) and Nanotechnology (MSc) and received his PhD in 2022 on Inverse design of nanophotonic cavities from the University of Exeter (United Kingdom). He is currently a postdoctoral researcher part of the team at Nanophotonic Technology Center based in Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain). His role in the group is to study the chiral optical forces produced by integrated photonic waveguides that enable the sorting of chiral nanoparticles or enantiomers, from a theoretical point of view and at an experimental level testing photonic integrated circuits in combination with microfluidics.

Josep Martínez Romeu

PhD Student

I was born in Valencia (Spain) in 1997. Have a degree and master in physics and am interested in all thing physics and programming. I also have a masters in data science. I have experience analysing physical data and medical and text data. I have worked with python, R, C++, Matlab and SQL. Have experience working with Excel and web scraping. My interests focus on physics and math, and designing and studying different physical systems, in particular those involving electromagnetism.

Daniel Arenas Ortega

PhD Student

Daniel Arenas Ortega has a background in Biomedical Engineering (BSc) and Photonics Engineering (MSc). Both field combined are the perfect interdisciplinary background for the design and characterization of photonics integrated devices for biomedical applications. He has participated in a project for the experimental fabrication and characterization of a Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) substrate during his bachelor final project. Also, he has participated in a project for sensing nanoforces exerted in cellular living tissues using an optomechanical cavity composed of silicon nanopillars.

Francisco José Rodríguez Fortuño

Reader in Nanophotonics

Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño is Reader at King’s College London Physics Department, researching on nanophotonics, optical forces, spin-orbit interactions of light and new electromagnetic phenomena, with a focus on near-field effects. Francisco earned his Telecommunications Engineering BSc, MSc and PhD at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, with long research stays at University of Pennsylvania and King’s College London, where he became a postdoc and later obtained a permanent academic position in 2015, starting his own research team. Francisco is author of 71 research papers on international journals, h-index 28 (Google Scholar), recipient of the ERC Starting Grant PSINFONI as PI, and is Co-I in EIC Pathfinder CHIRALFORCE.

Francesca Baletto

Associate professor

• PhD in Physics (2003) from Univ. of Genova, Italy.
  
• UNESCO- fellow (2003-06) at ICTP, Trieste, Italy.
• Research Assistant (2006-07) at the Dept, of Materials Science and Engineering, MIT (USA)
• Lecturer (2007-2013), Senior Lecturer (2013-2018), Reader (2018-2021) at the Physics Department King’s College London (UK), 2021 Visiting professor at DIPC, San Sebastian (Spain).
• Since 2022, «direct call» as associate professor in Physics at the Physics Department, University of Milan, Italy. Currently visiting professor at the King’s College London.

My scientific interest regard the desing and characterization of nanomaterials based on metallic nanoparticles for catalysis and photocatalysis. My background is in numerical modelling and bridges materials science, nanophysics, and chemistry. My contribution is the implementation and use of numerial tools to study, control, and elucidate the relationship between the morphology and chemo-physical properties of nanoparticles. Recent accomplishments focus on tailoring the catalytic, magnetic, and optical features of metallic nanoparticles, leading to novel desing rules. Closely to the objectives of CHIRALFORCE is to show how the optical properties of gold and Au-based nanoparticles can be tuned by their geometrical shape, and how to retrieve polarizability fro first-principles calculations such as time dependent density functional theory.

Promoting women and mums in science and the diversity in science to overcome societal barriers through the project Fiorire con la scienza (in Italian only, http://fiorireconlascienza.unimi.it/).

Win Noorduin

Group leader Self-organizing Matter, and Proffesor at University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Wim Noorduin leads the Self-Organizing Matter group at AMOLF and is professor by special appointment at the University of Amsterdam. He is co-founder (and currently scientific advisor) of Lumetallix, a start-up company that exploits innovative photoluminescent technology for mitigating lead pollution.

 In 2010, Noorduin received his PhD from Radboud University. From 2010 to 2013, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. From 2014 to 2015, he functioned as both a research associate at Harvard University and an assistant professor at Radboud University. From 2015 onwards, he has been leader of the Self-Organising Matter group at the NWO-Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam.

 Currently, Noorduin’s research focuses on the dynamic interplay between chemical reactions and crystallization phenomena to control the emergence of complexity in the solid state. His group is known for designing physical/chemical schemes to self-organize complex materials and develop new chiral amplification methods for the synthesis of enantiomerically pure building blocks. Current research includes the development of new routes to control crystallization, material composition, shape and hierarchical organization of mineralized structures and the design of physical/chemical feedback mechanisms to self-correct and amplify the emergence of complexity. Noorduin’s research is funded by various grants, including the ERC Consolidator, and Veni, Vidi and KLEIN grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Femius Koenderink

Group leader Resonant Nanophotonics at AMOLF, and Professor at University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Femius Koenderink (1976) studied Experimental Physics (MSc 1998, cum laude) and Mathematics (MSc 1999, cum laude) at Utrecht University. He did his PhD studies at the University of Amsterdam in the field of light emission and scattering in 3D photonic crystals, and subsequently joined ETH Zürich as postdoctoral fellow with Vahid Sandoghdar to specialize in near field optics. Since 2008 he is principal investigator of the “Resonant Nanophotonics” team at AMOLF, where since 2016 he is also Department Head. In 2012 he was appointed as professor by special appointment at the Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam. He received the NWO Veni, Vidi and Vici personal talent awards (dutch equivalents of the ERC Starting and Consolidator scheme), and was elected to the ACS Photonics Young Investigator Lectureship (2018), and Optica Fellow in 2022.

Femius Koenderink is fascinated by the physics of subwavelength strongly scattering resonant structures to control propagation, emission, detection, and amplification of light. His work sits at the interface of plasmonics, metasurfaces, nanoscopy of single nano-objects and the field of light-matter interaction at the level of single molecules and single photon sources. His group develops state of the art optical techniques including polarization and phase-resolved Fourier microscopy technique to quantify far-field radiation patterns of nanoscale objects. This technique will be further extended and applied in the CHIRALFORCE project. Koenderink has published ca. 150 papers, presented > 50 invited lectures, and supervised 16 PhD theses. His industry collaborations include the domains of solid state lighting (Philips, Signify, Lumileds), microscopy and spectroscopy (DELMIC), and wafer metrology (Bruker, ASML) . Innovations have been transferred for patenting to Lumileds, ASML, NXP and Philips, while polarimetric Fourier microscopy is now part of the DELMIC product line-up.

Michel Leeman

Senior Team Leader

Michel Leeman received his PhD in 2009 on the topic of the resolution of enantiomers by crystallization. Currently, he is a Senior Team Leader at Symeres (Groningen, The Netherlands) where he is involved in projects concerning organic chemistry and the resolution of enantiomers for many pharmaceutical partners. He has co-authored 35 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and is a co-inventor on 3 patents.

Han Gardeniers

Professor

Han (J.G.E.) Gardeniers (MSc Chemistry 1985, PhD Exp. Solid-state Physics 1990, both from Radboud University Nijmegen) joined the University of Twente in 1990 and was a visiting researcher at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh PA, USA) and University College of London during the years 1994-1995. From 2001 till 2003 he worked as a senior scientist at Kymata Ltd./Alcatel Optronics and Micronit Microfluidics. In 2007 he started his research group «Mesoscale Chemical Systems», which focuses on micro and nanostructures for chemical applications, including microreactors and microfluidic systems for chemical analysis. He received an NWO Vici grant in 2004 and an ERC Advanced Grant in 2017, co-authored over 300 reviewed journal papers and was co-inventor on 13 patents.