Category Archives: People

Grigoris Konstantinidis

09/2007 to 01/2012 PhD Student on BEC1
11/2006 to 08/2007 Master Student on BEC1

Grigoris joined the Cretan Matter-Waves Group in November 2006 as a Master student. He graduated from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. October 2005 he came to the Physics Departement of the University of Crete to do a Master in General Physics with a specialization in Condensed Matter Physics.

Gregory succesfully defended his thesis (link to pdf) on the 25. January 2012.

Olivier Morizot

03/2007 – 04/2009 Postdoc on BEC 1 working on dark-gound imaging

Olivier did his PhD in the COMETA group at the Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers in Paris, where he is studying BEC’s in RF-traps. After this he went to India to join for three months the Fundamental Interactions Lab of Dr. Unnikrishnan in Mumbai where he has managed to take part in the first BEC of India.

After leaving our group in April 2009, Olivier spend the summer in Brasil, working in the team of Vanderlei Bagnato on a project of photonic molecules in a MOT and exploring the new world.

Olivier stayed with us from March 2007 – April 2009 working on dark-gound imaging.

Olivier is now a Maître de Conférences (lecturer) at the Université de Provence in Marseille, where he works in the team of Martina Knoop and Françoise Vedel on the development of cold ions experiments. He is setting up a miniture atom clock using a single Ca+ ion.

05/2011 to 05/2016 Lecturer at the Université de Provence in Marseille
05/2009 to 08/2009 Postdoc with the Cretan Matter Waves
05/2007 to 04/2009 Marie Curie Postdoc
06/2006 to 09/2006 PostDoc researcher in the Fundamental Interactions Lab of Dr. Unnikrishnan in Mumbai
09/2003 to 05/2006 PhD student in the group of Hélène PERRIN and Vincent LORENT at the Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers (Villetaneuse, France).
09/2000 to 05/2003 Undergraduate student at the Institut d’Optique Graduated School (Orsay, France).

Mark Baker

11/2006 to 12/2009 Post-Doc on BEC 1 and 2

Mark was instrumental in setting up BEC 1 and 2 during his postdoc 2006-2009.

Before joining us at the Cretan Matter-Waves Mark did his undergraduate studies in Brisbane, Australia, at the University of Queensland (1996-1998). This was followed by an 18 month stint or work and study in Perth at the University of Western Australia (UWA).
In 2000 he returned to Brisbane, and from 2001-2006 he undertook his PhD studies in metastable atomic beam lithography at the Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University, under the supervision Dr. Robert Sang and Prof. W. MacGillivra.

Mark is currently a researcher in Quantum Technologie s with Defence, Science and Technology Group, Australia, and a Senior Research Fellow (Hon.) at the University of Queensland, where he leads research with optically trapped ultra-cold atoms for precision sensing.

11/2006 to 12/2009 Post-Doc on BEC 1 and 2
09/2001 to 07/2006 PhD studies at the Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University
09/1996 to 06/1998 Undergraduate at the University of Queensland

Antonis Protopapadakis

11/2006 to 08/2007 Undergraduate student

Antonis did his undergraduate degree at the University of Crete, in the course of which he a project on a new type of grating stabilised diode laser.

Melina Pappa

10/2006 to 06/2011 Phd Student on BEC 1

Melina was born in Larisa, Greece. She joined the Cretan Matter-Waves Group as a Ph.D. student in October 2006. In November 2004 she graduated from the Physics Department of the University of Crete . From the same University she received her Master’s Degree in General Physics in September 2006.

She graduated from her PhD in June 2011. Her PhD thesis can eb found here.

10/2006 to 06/2011 Phd Studies in Physics
09/2004 to 09/2006 Master studies
10/1999 to 10/2004 Undergraduate Studies

Daniel Sahagún Sánchez

10/2006-05/2010 PostDoc on BEC1
03/2014-06/2014 PostDoc on BEC1

Daniel did his undergraduate studies in the National University of Mexico (UNAM). After that he carried out a PhD studying the fundamental limitations of atom chips at the Centre for Cold Matter at Imperial College London lead by Ed Hinds in Imperial College, London. In 2006 he joined the Cretan Matter Waves as a postdoc for four years during the lab setup and first BEC experiments. He made a second postdoctoral stay at group of Bjorn Hessmo , part of the Centre for Quantum Technologies, at the National University of Singapore (NUS). In Singapore he worked on fiber optic integration onto atom chips and prepared experiments to study the interaction of micro-nano fibers with cold atoms. During his stay in Singapore Daniel continued to collaborate with the Cretan Matter Waves in experiments related to atom interferometry and lasers.

From June 2014 he has researcher position (tenure track) at UNAM, Mexico City. There he is a founding member of the Laboratory for Quantum Matter of the Physics Institute and has started his own research group

06/2014 to to date Research Group Leader

06/2010 to 06/2014 PostDoc in Singapore

He made a second postdoctoral stay at group of Bjorn Hessmo , part of the Centre for Quantum Technologies, at the National University of Singapore (NUS). In Singapore he worked on fiber optic integration onto atom chips and prepared experiments to study the interaction of micro-nano fibers with cold atoms. During his stay in Singapore Daniel continued to collaborate with the Cretan Matter Waves in experiments related to atom interferometry and lasers.

10/2006 to 05/2010 PostDoc on BEC1

Nicolas Lagos

08/2006 – 09/2007 Master Student

Nick joined the Cretan Matter-Waves Group in August 2006 as a Master student. He then did his mandatory service in the Greek army. Nick is now doing a PhD at the University of Patras in Department of Materials Science and also at the Institute of Materials in E.K.E.F.E at the Demokritos Institute in Athens. He is currently working on the theory of nanowires and nanoparticles structures.

Constantine Condylis

07/2006 to 07/2010 Postdoc on BEC 1

Before landing on Crete, he was a member of the Centre for Cold Matter (CCM) group of Prof. Ed Hinds at Imperial College London. There he completed his PhD working on the experiment searching for time reversal symmetry violation in YbF molecules: looking for the interaction of the electric dipole moment of the electron with the molecule via its tiny shift to the molecular energy levels. After his postdoc in Singapore on cold atoms, he quickly became now Chief Technology Officer at a startup company in Singapore. The company uses artificial intelligence and neural networks to analyse credit risks using big data. He is currently Head of Data Science at Tokopedia, an Indonesian unicorn and e-commerce company currently valued at more than 1.1 billion dollars in 2022.

07/2015 to 04/2016 Postdoc at the Singapore Centre for Quantum Technologies working with Rainer Dumke to make an BEC loaded into a ring-shaped optical-potential which forms the “Atomtronics” equivalent of a SQUID flux quit.
07/2010 to 07/2015 Postdoc in Singapore at the centre for quantum technologies in an atom-chip lab of Bjorn Hessmo. There he worked on a Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) experiment to trap an ultra-cold gas of Rb87 atoms below an atom-chip.
07/2006 to 07/2010 Postdoc on BEC 1
09/2002 to 06/2006PhD student at Imperial College London at the Centre for Cold Matter (CCM) group of Prof. Ed Hinds. There he completed his PhD working on the experiment searching for time reversal symmetry violation in YbF molecules: looking for the interaction of the electric dipole moment of the electron with the molecule via its tiny shift to the molecular energy levels.
09/1998 to 06/2002 Master student

Igor Lesanovsky

05/2006 – 12/2006 Theory Postdoc

ERC Igor is now a full Professor and ERC startup prize winner at University of Tuebingen.

He has recently won the Maxwell medal.

His research interests are:

Strongly correlated spin systems
Relaxation and thermalization of closed quantum systems
Trapping and manipulation of highly excited (Rydberg) atoms
Collective phenomena in ultracold atomic gases
Creation of non-classical states of light and matter
Quantum Information with atoms and trapped ions
Non-equilibrium in open quantum systems

Brief CV

2019 – now — Professor for Theoretical Atomic Physics and Synthetic Quantum Systems (U. of Tuebingen, Germany)
2013 – 2019 — Professor of Physics (University of Nottingham/UK)
2011 – 2013 — Associate Professor and Reader in Physics (University of Nottingham/UK)
2009 – 2011 — Lecturer in Physics (University of Nottingham/UK)
2007 – 2009 — PostDoc (University of Innsbruck/Austria)
2006 – 2006 — PostDoc (FORTH IESL, Heraklion/Greece)
2003 – 2006 — PhD (University of Heidelberg/Germany)

Lykourgos Bougas

03/2006 to 05/2014 PhD student on parity violation
05/2004 to 05/2006 Master student on parity violation

Lykourgos received his PhD from the Physics Department of the University of Crete. His thesis was supervised by Peter Rakitzis and Wolf von Klitzing.

His first postdoc at Berkeley was on a parity violation. He is now doing a second postdoc with Dmitry Budker’s Group in Mainz.

His motto is

Improving your self, is the only thing you can do to improve the world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein