The Team

Riccardo Sapienza
Principal Investigator
Professor of Physics at Imperial College London
He joined Imperial College London in 2017 from King’s College London where he held a lectureship since 2012. Before that he was a Ramon y Cajal fellow in ICFO, the Institute of Photonic Science in Barcelona, within the group of Prof. Niek van Hulst, after a postdoc in ICMM-CSIC Madrid, in the group of Prof. Cefe Lopez. 
Over a century ago he completed his PhD studies jointly in the Laboratories Kastler-Brossell (LKB) in Paris and in the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS) in Florence.   
contact me at r.sapienza [@] imperial.ac.uk
twitter: r1cc4rd0

Thottungal Valapu, Raziman
Research Fellow
Ph.D. in photonics from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Conducts theoretical and numerical research on the modification of light-matter interactions in nanophotonic landscapes. Current research focuses on unveiling the physics behind of semiconductor network lasers with a combination of nanophotonics, semiconductor physics, graph theory and machine learning.

Email: t.raziman [@] imperial.ac.uk

Stefano Vezzoli
Research Fellow
Ph.D. in Physics from Laboratoire Kastler Brossel and Milan Universita' degli Studi in 2013 and MSc in Physics from Milan Universita' degli Studi in 2009.
Email:  S.Vezzoli [@] imperial.ac.uk

Anthony Harwood
Ph.D. student
MSci in Physics from Southampton University. Working on time-varying metamaterials.
Email: a.harwood22 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Dimitrie-Calin Cielecki
Ph.D. student
MSci in Physics from Imperial College London. Working on single-photon generation in nanoscale structures.
Email: dimitrie-calin.cielecki17 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Jakub Dranczewski
Ph.D. student
PhD student as part of the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network project CORAL together with IBM Research Zurich. He has graduated with an MSci degree in Physics from Imperial College London, and has previous experience working in Physics labs across Imperial College and the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Wai Kit Ng
Research Associate
Ph.D. student, President’s Ph.D. scholar at Imperial
MPhil in Physics from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
His currently interests are random lasing on complex photonic network structures for functional devices.
Email: k.ng20 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Joseph Stone
Ph.D. student
MSci in Physics, University of Sussex

Alumni

Anna Fischer
Postdoctoral research at IBM Zurich
PhD student as part of the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network project CORAL together with IBM Research Zurich. She obtained both her MSc and BSc degree from ETH Zurich in Interdisciplinary Sciences - Chemistry and Physics and conducted her Master thesis working on III-V microdisk lasers at IBM-Research Europe.

Romain Tirole
At present: Research Associate CUNY, NY, USA
graduated from Imperial in 2023
MSc in Physics from Cambridge
BSc in Physics from Imperial College London
Email: romain.tirole16 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Tahiyat Huq
at present: Morgan Stanley
After completing an MSci degree in Physics from King’s College London, Tahiyat joined our team, and graduated in 2023
Email: tahiyat.huq17 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Dhruv Saxena
at present: Research associate in Queen’s Mary London (UK)
Ph.D. in Physics from Australian National University and B.Sc. (Hons) in Applied Mathematics from University of Sydney. Ph.D. dissertation was on the design and characterisation of III-V semiconductor nanowire lasers. My current research interests are in exploring the physics of nanomaterials, tailoring light-matter interactions and manipulating light at sub-wavelength scales for developing novel functional materials and devices.
Email:  D.Saxena [@] imperial.ac.uk, Twitter: @saxedh

Cynthia Vidal
at Present: Research associate at University of Antwerp (The Netherlands)
Ph.D. in Physics from the Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria with a dissertation on the optical characterization of complex-shaped gold nanoparticles. My current research aims at the investigation of improved light-matter interaction between nanostructures with 2D materials.
Email:  c.vidal [@] imperial.ac.uk

Eli Rezasoltani
at Present: Lecturer at Queen’s Mary University (UK)
Dr Elham Rezasoltani is currently working as a research associate in the Experimental Solid State Physics group (EXSS) at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London. She was awarded FRQNT fellowship in 2016, and worked as a FRQNT postdoctoral fellowship in Prof. Jenny Nelson’s group (2016-2018). She previously received her
PhD in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from University of Montreal.
Email:  e.rezasoltani14 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Daniel Glass
Ph.D. Student
Daniel investigates plasmonic nanochemistry with a focus on surface-enhanced phenomena, supervised by Prof. Stefan Maier (Imperial), Prof. Ivan Parkin (UCL) and us. Before he did an MSci in Chemistry and Molecular Physics from University of Nottingham
Email: D.Glass17 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Harriet Walker
at present: HSBC
Ph.D. from Imperial College London, supervised by Prof. Stefan Maier and us, studying particles assembly and precise deposition for plasmonics and nano-optics.
MSci degree in Physics from Imperial College London. She is
Email: harriet.walker12 [@] imperial.ac.uk

Sandro Mignuzzi
at present: quantitative analyst at Orbis Investments
Ph.D. from National Physical Laboratory and King’s College London
MSc in Electronics Engineering from Roma Tre University, Italy
Email: s.mignuzzi [@] imperial.ac.uk

Sergii Morozov
at present: Postdoc in Technical University of Denmark
Ph.D. from Imperial College London
MSc in Physics, photonics from Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena, Germany
MSc in optics from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
Email: s.morozov [@] imperial.ac.uk

Soraya Carlos Caixeiro
at present: Lecturer at Bath University
Ph.D. from King’s College London
After completing an MSci degree in Physics from King’s College London, I am completing my Ph.D. in bio-compatible and silk random lasing. I am interested in applied nanophotonics, mainly complex systems for random lasing, branching in biopolymers. I am very keen on the design and nanofabrication.

Michele Gaio
at present: Strategic Consultant at AMEY
Ph.D. from King’s College London
MSc in Physics from University of Padova, Italy.
 

Francisco Fernandes
at present: Maître de Conférences (Assistant Professor) Université Pierre et Marie Curie.
Interested in Colloids, Biopolymers, Mechanical properties, Nanomaterials, Biomaterials, Macroporous materials, Nanocomposite materials, Cell encapsulation
Email: francisco.fernandes [@] upmc.fr

Marta Castro Lopez
at present: Research engineer for Huawei
With a Telecommunication Engineering background, I started my scientific career with a Master in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology which brought me to complete my Ph.D studies in “Nanophotonic structures for light control at the nanoscale” in ICFO Barcelona. 

Duong van Ta
at present: Lecturer at Department of Optical Engineering, Le Quy Don Technical University, 236 Hoang Quoc Viet, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University
MSc in Engineering in optoelectronics from Bauman Moscow State Technical University
Interested in all-biomaterial lasers, soft-matter microlasers, biosensing. 

Join us

Ph.D. studentships and Post-doc positions available! Contact me at riccardo.sapienza @ imperial.ac.uk