Category Archives: People Map

Saurabh Pandey

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


Saurabh started his second postdoc  at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the group of Malcolm Boshier. He is working on the demonstration of a novel atomtronic rotation sensor based on optical dipole potentials.

Saurabh was previously a PhD student and postdoc  on BEC 1 on guided matterwaves. 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).

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”

Giannis Drougakis

10/2021 – today Postdoc on BEC 1 and Space Optics
11/2016 – 10/2021 PhD Student on BEC 1 and OBST
03/2015 – 10/2016 Master Student on the ESA-OBST project

Giannis joined the Cretan Matter Waves group in March 2015 to work on the ESA-OBST project. He holds a diploma in electrical and computer engineering (2012) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He received his master’s degree from the inter-institutional graduate program “Vision and Optics”, of the University of Crete finishing his master thesis entitled “Vibrational and angular stability of optical systems for space applications” in December 2015. He continued for his PhD working on BEC 1 and OBST, graduating in October 2021. He is now a postdoc on BEC 1 and OBST.

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.