Symposium:
Finding the limits of enantiomeric separation using chiral light
When:
18th of May 2026
Where:
Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia (Spain).
“Salón de Actos,” Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación, Building 4D
KEYNOTE TALKS
INVITED SPEAKERS
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
AGENDA
DESCRIPTION:
Separating enantiomers is crucial to produce bioactive molecules, e.g., in early-phase drug discovery. The present solution of chiral chromatography for this multi-billion-dollar market is slow and cumbersome since it requires tailored chemistry for each chiral compound and relies on large and expensive separation columns. Recently, it has been suggested that optical forces may replace chemical interaction to achieve enantiomeric sorting in photonic integrated circuits. Compared to state-of-the-art chiral chromatography methods, photonic technology offers an extremely quick, tunable, scalable, and cheap method for isolating enantiopure molecules.
The international symposium “Finding the Limits of Enantiomer Separation Using Chiral Light” will bring together, over the course of one day, key researchers (including internationally renowned speakers) in the fields of photonics, spectroscopy, quantum chemistry, and nanotechnology. This event will serve as a forum to explore the fundamental mechanisms governing the interaction between structured light and chiral systems, as well as to discuss the physical, technical, and conceptual limits of these methodologies. In particular, it aims to elucidate whether the separation of chiral molecules on integrated chips using optical forces is feasible, which would represent a milestone of both scientific and technological significance in this highly relevant field.
The symposium is organized within the framework of the European project CHIRALFORCE (https://www.chiralforce.eu/), a pioneering Horizon Europe initiative focused on the study of chiral optical forces. The event will combine invited keynote talks, scientific presentations from the CHIRALFORCE consortium, poster sessions, and a final roundtable discussion aimed at defining the current scientific challenges in the optical separation of enantiomers. This structure is designed to foster critical discussion, the exchange of ideas, and the generation of new international collaborations in this emerging and highly interdisciplinary field.
Hosting the event in Valencia strengthens the strategic positioning of the Valencian Community as a hub of scientific excellence in quantum technologies and advanced photonics, promoting knowledge transfer, the international visibility of its research centers, and the attraction of specialized talent in key areas for the scientific and industrial transformation of the region.
KEYNOTE TALKS
Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño,
King’s College
London, United Kingdom
"Optical enantiomer separation in the linear dipole regime & the electromagnetic symmetry sphere"
In this talk I will review the most general description of optical forces in the linear dipolar regime, including chiral separation in diverse possible configurations. I will introduce the concept of the electromagnetic energy-symmetry-sphere, a mathematical tool that significantly reduces the complexity of optical force equations and brings fundamental insight into the nature of optical forces, light-matter interaction, and electromagnetic phenomena in general.
Jessica Wade,
Imperial College
London, United Kingdom
"Chiral materials, light and spin"
Chiral materials demonstrate a unique combination of optical, electronic, and magnetic properties, which unlock unparalleled opportunity in optoelectronic, spintronic and quantum technologies. In this talk we’ll explore how to create, control, characterise and exploit chiral materials for a more sustainable future.
INVITED SPEAKERS
Robert P. Cameron, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom:
«Robust chiral optical force via electric dipole interactions, inspired by a sea creature»
Abstract
I will describe our latest work on chiral optical forces for enantiomeric enrichment (COFFEE). Inspired by a sea creature, we envisage orienting chiral molecules using static and infrared fields such that opposite enantiomers are robustly attracted towards regions of orthogonal linear rather than circular polarisation in a visible standing wave via electric dipole interactions. Our approach is applicable to essentially all chiral molecules, including isotopically chiral molecules which are notoriously difficult to separate using chemical methods.
Jorge Olmos-Trigo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain:
«A Novel Chiroptical Spectroscopy Technique»
Abstract
Chiral objects typically exhibit a different extinction for the two circular polarizations of light. Researchers often detect the chirality of objects by measuring this extinction difference employing Circular Dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. In this Letter, we present a new spectroscopy technique for detecting the chirality of spherical objects based on measuring the Stokes parameters at any non-forward angle. The chirality measure we introduce effectively eliminates achiral background noise and is independent of both the object’s concentration and the optical path length. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the technique is robust and verifiable in-situ by measuring the Stokes vector at two different non-forward angles of choice.
Susanna Bertuletti, AMOLF, The Netherlands:
«Could the strength of chiroptical properties be related to the degree of geometrical chiralty?»
Abstract
Chirality is a fundamental property observed across molecular, supramolecular, and nanoscale systems, yet its quantitative description remains unclear.
This presentation examines whether the magnitude of chiroptical response depends on the type and spatial distribution of stereogenic elements. After introducing point, axial, and helical chirality from a stereochemical perspective, circular dichroism spectroscopy and the dissymmetry (g) factor are discussed as tools to probe and quantify chirality.
Comparisons across molecular classes show that localized stereocenters typically produce weak chiroptical responses, while extended helical and collective systems can exhibit much larger g-factors.
These observations raise open questions about how chirality should be defined and compared across different length scales and material classes.
Laura Rego, CSIC, Spain:
«Tailored laser fields for chiral sensing»
Abstract
Tailored laser fields are a powerful tool to investigate chirality. We show that the interaction of vector beams with chiral molecules results in topological chiral rings, where the handedness of the molecules is imprinted in the divergence of their light emission.
Sebastian Golat, King’s College London, United Kingdom:
«Analytical Limits of Chiral Optical Sorting Using Evanescent Waves»
Abstract
I will present analytical estimates for the timescales of all-optical enantiomer separation driven by chiral forces in evanescent fields near waveguides. Combining a symmetry-based force decomposition with drift–diffusion dynamics in liquids, I derive closed-form expressions for the separation time of dipolar particles under realistic conditions.
David Ayuso, Imperial College London, United Kingdom:
«Shaping light’s polarisation in 3D for efficient chiral sensing and manipulation»
Abstract
Polarisation states of light where the electric field vector traces a chiral trajectory in time enable efficient discrimination of small chiral molecules via purely electric-dipole interactions. I will discuss how we create such locally chiral light and apply it to efficient chiral sensing and manipulation, including potential applications for enantioseparation.
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Prof. Alejandro Martínez,
Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Prof. Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño,
King’s College London, United Kingdom
Prof. Francesca Baletto,
Università degli Studi di Milano, Italia
Prof. Wim Noorduin,
AMOLF, The Netherlands
Prof. Femius Koenderink,
AMOLF, The Netherlands
Dr. Michel Leeman,
Symeres, The Netherlands
Prof. Han Gardeniers,
University of Twente, The Netherlands
Prof. Riina Aav,
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Prof. Alejandro Martínez,
Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Dr. Elena Pinilla-Cienfuegos,
Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Dr. Iago Díez,
«HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-
Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Josep Martínez-Romeu,
Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
Daniel Arenas-Ortega,
Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain
AGENDAAGENDA
08:30
Registration of participants
09:00
Opening of the event by the organizer (Prof. Alejandro Martínez), a representative of the Scientific Committee, and a representative of the Organizing Committee.
09:15
Keynote Session
09:15
Jessica Wade (Imperial College London, UK ): “Chiral materials, light and spin”
10:00
Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño (King’s College London, UK ): “Optical enantiomer separation in the linear dipole regime & the electromagnetic symmetry sphere”
10:45 – 11:30
Coffee break and poster session
11:30
Invited talks (Session 1)
11:30
Susanna Bertuletti (AMOLF, The Netherlands ): “Could the strength of chiroptical properties be related to the degree of geometrical chirality?”
12:00
Jorge Olmos-Trigo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain ): “A Novel Chiroptical Spectroscopy Technique”
12:30
Laura Rego (CSIC, Spain ): “Tailored laser fields for chiral sensing”
13:00
Lunch (catering provided for participants)
14:30
Invited talks (Session 2)
14:30
David Ayuso (Imperial College London, UK ): “Shaping light’s polarisation in 3D for efficient chiral sensing and manipulation”
15:00
Sebastian Golat (King’s College London, UK ): “Analytical Limits of Chiral Optical Sorting Using Evanescent Waves”
15:30
Robert P. Cameron, (University of Strathclyde, UK ): “Robust chiral optical force via electric dipole interactions, inspired by a sea creature
16:00 – 16:30
Coffee break and poster session
16:30
Round table: What are the limits of enantiomer separation using chiral light?
17:30
Closing ceremony
18:00
Visit to UPV facilities (Nanophotonics Technology Center), for guests
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
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.