News & updates
Latest developments from our institute
Stay informed about new research results, awards, events, and collaborations across our scientific community.
Vici grant for Ewold Verhagen
On February 26th, NWO announced that AMOLF group leader Ewold Verhagen receives a Vici grant to carry out the project Programmable nonlinear optomechanical metamaterials. The budget available for this research project is 1.5 M€. NWO considers the Vici grant as an incentive for adventurous, talented, and groundbreaking researchers.
First ANION Symposium with strong community spirit and collaboration
Electrochemists working on nanoscale electrochemical interfaces came together in Amsterdam to share recent findings and explore new collaboration opportunities. The ANION Symposium was the first edition organized by the Advanced Netherlands Institute of Nanoelectrochemistry (ANION), with AMOLF and UvA as co-organizers. The symposium took place on Friday, October 31.
Vibrant Metamaterials2025
The conference Metamaterials2025 brought together 400 researchers from around the world to share their results and vision. Metamaterials was held at Felix Meritis in Amsterdam from September 2 – 6.
Light controls sound in a nanoscale ‘quantum Hall’ metamaterial
AMOLF group leader Ewold Verhagen and his fellow researchers have taken a major step in creating new forms of materials that make sound waves behave in extraordinary ways. In their recent publication in Nature Communications, the researchers demonstrate how light can be used to make sound travel only in one direction through a nanomechanical network – a breakthrough inspired by one of the most celebrated effects in physics, the quantum Hall effect. This opens the door to many more surprising physical effects still waiting to be explored.
Future Optical Broadband Systems program funds research in optical sensing technologies
As co-applicant, AMOLF group leader Ewold Verhagen receives funding from the NWO program Future Optical Broadband Systems to break the existing technological and economic barriers in the application of optical sensing technologies in industrial systems. Andrea Fiore from TU Eindhoven leads the project called BroadSense. A total amount of 923.000 euros is available for the project, from NWO and industrial co-funders.
Infomatter symposium: taking advantage of information in a system
On Thursday, May 22nd, AMOLF organized the Infomatter Symposium to discuss exciting developments in information processing — ranging from biochemical to mechanical and optical systems. What these systems share is that they do not rely on conventional computers. This is a significant advantage, given that the energy cost of computing is rising much faster than that of energy production.
A new mechanism for concentrating light on a chip
Concentrating light in a volume as small as the wavelength itself is a challenge that is crucial for numerous applications. Researchers from AMOLF, TU Delft, and Cornell University in the USA have demonstrated a new way to focus light on an extremely small scale. Their method utilizes special properties of a photonic crystal and works for a broader spectrum of wavelengths than alternative methods. The researchers publish their findings in Science Advances on April 18th.
EQUSPACE consortium receives European funding for developing silicon quantum technologies
The EQUSPACE consortium has been awarded 3.2 million euros from the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Pathfinder Open funding program to pioneer quantum technologies in silicon. The group of Ewold Verhagen at AMOLF is one of the five European partners of the consortium, led by the University of Jyväskylä, which aims to develop a new type of silicon quantum platform.