Category Archives: People

Sofia Botsi

06/2013-12/2013 undergraduate student 

Sofia is an undergraduate student at the Physics Departement of the University of Crete.

She then went to Klaasjan van Druten’s laboratory at the University of Amsterdam, where she constructed a diode laser system for the generation of Rydberg atoms on a chip.

Sofia Botsi is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Optical and Quantum Systems Engineering group performing experimental and theoretical work in support of the Cold Atom Lab instrument in orbit. Her recent paper on multi species BEC on the space station was published in Nature.

Benjamin Sherlock

04/2012-05/2013 Postdoc on BEC 1

Before joining us at the Cretan Matter-Waves Ben his D.Phil. at Oxford University and before this M.Sci. at Hatfield College, University of Durham. Ben is one of the pioneers of Time-Averaged-Adiabatic Potentials with the first demonstration of the double TAAP and the TAAP ring.  Ben is now a Lecturer in Translational Biophotonics at the University of Exeter, England, United Kingdom.

Dimitrios Papazoglou

06/2010 – today Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete

Dimitris is involved in everything optical in the BEC group.

Scientific interests

  1. Nonlinear interactions of ultra-short laser pulses with transparent media
  2. Exotic optical waves and light bullets
  3. Wavefront sensing and manipulation
  4. Laser microfabrication (in bulk structuring of dielectrics, micro-mechanics,
    diffractive surface structures).
  5. Dynamic holography, photorefractive materials

Martins Bruvelis

07/2010 to 09/2010 Internship on Crete

Martins was visiting us the from University of Latvia to work on the BEC1 experiment, when he did some excellent work manly on the computer control of the experiment.

After doing his a Ph.D. in University of Latvia and continuing research at the Laser Centre of University of Latvia, he is now a Senior Information Technology Specialist at the CEMSE – Computer, Electrical And Mathematical Sciences And Engineering Division of KAUST.

 01/2014 to 01/2018 PhD student at the Laser Centre of University of Latvia.
10/2010 to 10/2014 Research Assistant  at the Laser Centre of University of Latvia.
07/2010 to 09/2010 Internship on Crete
01/2007 to 09/2010 Undergraduate Studies

Michael Morrissey

 09/2009 – 08/2011 Postdoc on BEC2

Before coming to Crete I graduated from Cork Insitutute of Technology (CIT) with a B.Sc. in “Applied Physics and Instrumentation” in 2004. As part of completeing the B.Sc. a five month project was undertaken. This project, entitled “Quality Surveillance Algorithms for Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifiers”, was carried out in the Information and Communication Network (ICN) Department at Siemens AG research facility in Munich. The project entailed research into how the aging of components with the EDFA can be monitored using algorithms. From a mathematical model, the key parameters needed to detect the degradation/aging of the EDFA were determined. In addition to theoretical work, optical experiments were carried out to determine a technique to measure the required parapeters. A procedure was developed to test the feasibility and accuracy of the EDFA model.

From my experience in Siemens AG, I developed an interest in optics and decided to pursue this interest. I started my PhD in September 2004 with the Quantum Optics Group under the supervision of Dr. Síle Nic Chormaic, in the area of “Control of cold rubidium atoms“.

I built the first cold atom experiment in South-Africa at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and then moved on to work at Extreme Light Infrastructure in Prague

Gustav Wikström

05/2009-10/2009 Master Student

Gustav joined the Cretan Matter-Waves Group in May 2009 to do his thesis work for his master at Umeå University, Sweden. He was born in the northern part of Sweden in a town called Umeå. He did his master thesis with us at the Cretan Matterwave group in collaboration with the departement of physics at Umeå University. His topic was dark-ground imaging of atoms from a MOT.

Jules Grucker

11/2008 to 08/2009 Postdoc on BEC 2

Jules joined the Cretan Matter Waves group in Novembe 2008. He started in Sptember 2009 in the the LKB solid helium group led by Ph. Jacquier. He is a Maître de Conférences at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and is a researcher at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He passed his Thèse d’État in 2018. He did his undergraduate degree in physics at University Strasbourg 1. He then went with an Erasmus scholarship to do his first Master degree at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark. After this he returned to France to do a second Master degree, this time at the the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris under the supervision of Paul Indelicato (currently director of Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure). For his PhD he went to the Institute Galilée of the Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers (University Paris 13). There he joined the IOA (Interferometry and Optics with Atoms) team of Martial Ducloy. He stayed on for one more year as a post-doc before coming to Crete.

Jules is now a lecturer at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel at Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris, where he studies the properties of solid Helium with the aim of demonstrating a super solid.

11/2008 to 08/2009 Postdoc at the Cretan Matter Waves group
05/2006 to 05/2008 PhD Student at the Institute Galilée of the Laboratoire de Physique
05/2001 to 05/2006 Undergraduate degree in physics at University Strasbourg 1

Alexandros Tzimis

07/2008 to 11/2009 Undergraduate Student

Alexandros joined the Cretan Matter-Waves Group in July 2008 as an undergraduate student. He was born in Marousi, Athens and grew up in Chania. He started his studies as an undergraduate at the Physics Departement of the University of Crete in 2003. His main interests are technology/computers/movies. He is now pursuing a PhD in the group of Prof Savvidis at the University of Crete.