Said Rodriguez starts new group on Interacting Photons

As of November 1^st, Said Rodriguez will be appointed as AMOLF tenure track group leader. Rodriguez will start a new group on Interacting Photons in the Nanophotonics research theme.

In his Interacting Photons group, Rodriguez will study photon-photon interactions to investigate phenomena emerging from the interplay of optical nonlinearity and noise. The group uses organic and inorganic nanostructured materials combined with open-access micro-cavities enabling fine control over the exciton-photon coupling. Rodriguez’s fundamental interests include critical phenomena (out-of-equilibrium phase transitions), noise-assisted photon transport in driven-dissipative systems, and quantum simulation. He is also interested in applications of interacting photonic systems, e.g. optical memories, switches, and quantum networks.

Rodriguez received his PhD (cum laude) from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the former AMOLF/Philips group of professor Jaime Gómez Rivas. He then was a Marie-Curie fellow at the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies (France). Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of professor Allard Mosk at the Leonard S. Ornstein laboratory of Utrecht University. He has worked with several hybrid light-matter systems involving organic and inorganic luminescent materials as well as metallic and dielectric optical resonators.

In July 2017, Rodriguez was awarded an NWO Veni grant of 250.000 euro for his proposal on Photonic transport through complex nonlinear systems: using noise to transmit a signal. Rodriguez will carry out this research project at AMOLF in collaboration with the group of professor Mosk at Utrecht University.

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