Category Archives: People Map

Marcel Morillas

11/2023 Visiting Student on BEC1


I am Marcel Morillas, I completed my undergraduate studies at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Then, I pursued an MSc. in Photonics at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, where I did my Master’s Thesis on simulating one and two-mode squeezed light in topological photonic lattices as a member of the Quantum and Atom Optics Group (QAOS) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Beyond my scientific pursuits, I enjoy watching and playing sports, especially American football and playing the bass guitar.

Saurabh Pandey

07/2019 – 11/2019 Postdoc on BEC1
10/2013 – 07/2019 PhD Student on BEC1
06/2013 – 09/2013 Intern


Saurabh was PhD student and postdoc  on BEC 1 on guided matterwaves, where he was the first author on our Nature Paper demonstrating ring-shaped matterwave guides.

Saurabh is now a senior postdoc at the Sandia National Lab (in Albuquerque), where he is working on on atomic clocks and Rydberg quantum computing.

Before this, Saurabh worked  at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the group of Malcolm Boshier, where he was working on the demonstration of a novel atomtronic rotation sensor based on optical dipole potentials.

Continue reading

Anamika Nair Karunakaran

05/2016-08/2016 Intern on an LabView project

Anamika joined us from the Cochin University of Science and Technology South Kalamassery in Kerala, India. She went on to do her master in the Quantum Information with Cold Atoms and Non-classical Light Group of Morgan Mitchel at the ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain. She is now working on her PhD at the Technical University of Denmark in collaboration with the laser manufacturer NKT Photonics. She will be part of the EU project  ETN-MEFISTA (Multi-scale fibre-based optical frequency combs: science, technology and applications).

She has successfully defended her PhD at the University of Delft. Her topic was “Investigations of microresonator ­based frequency combs”

Her Linked-in page is here.

Georgios Vasilakis

Welcome back Georgos !

Georgos Vasilakis is joining us as a postdoc on BEC1.

Before joining us Vasilis was…

09/2012 – 04/2016 PostDoc at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
Georgo was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Quantop Group
of Eugene S. Polzik  at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.  He was working on Experimental quantum optics / Light-atom quantum interface.
04/2006 – 03/2016 PhD at Princeton University
Georgos did his PhD and M.S. at  Princeton University, NJ under the supervision of  Professor Michael V. Romalis.  The topic of his PhD thesis was: “Precision Measurements of Spin Interactions with High Density Atomic Vapors”

Kostas Poulios

day11/2014 – 07/2017 : postdoc on BEC 1 and Space Optics


Kostas got his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at the Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he majored on Solid State Physics and Optics.

He then started his PhD in 2009 at the Centre for Quantum Photonics, University of Bristol, under the supervision of Prof. Jeremy O’Brien, where he did experimental research on integrated quantum photonics for quantum information and quantum computation science. His main focus was on implementation of multi-photon integrated quantum walks, with dissertation titled: Integrated Photonic Continuous-Time Quantum Walks.

He then did a short post-doc in 2014 still with Prof. Jeremy O’Brien at the Centre for Quantum Photonics, working in a collaboration with Prof. Axel Kuhn’s Atom-Photon Connection group at Oxford University. He was also a visiting post-doctoral research assistant (early 2015) at the Atom-Photon Connection groupOxford University. The scope of the collaboration was to use a deterministic single photon source (single Rb87 atoms in a cavity) to perform quantum logic experiments on integrated photonic devices.

In November 2014 he joined the Cretan Matter-Waves / Bose-Einstein Condensation groupI.E.S.L.FO.R.T.H. in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, where he is since working as a post-doctoral researcher. His main project is the implementation of a fully-guided, ring-shaped, Sagnac-type atom-interferometer using time-averaged adiabatic potentials (TAAPs) and Rb87 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs).

In summer 2017, Kostas joined the cold atoms group of Thomas Fernholz at Nottingham University.