Lukas Novotny - novotny@optics.rochester.edu Professor Lukas' general research interest is focused on optical phenomena associated with nanoscale materials. He is interested in near-field light-matter interactions and its applications. (CV+Publications)

Barbara Schirmer - schirmer@optics.rochester.edu Administrator Barbara coordinates our multiple research projects and keeps our efforts organized. She is in charge of budgets, accounting and purchasing, organizes workshops and collaborative meetings, and maintains our web pages.

Hayk Harutyunyan - hayk@optics.rochester.edu Post Doc Hayk received his PhD from the University of Pisa, Italy, on excited state dynmics of SWNTs. He will study nonlinear interactions in the optical near-field with special focus on surface plasmon polaritons associated with metal nanostructures. Hayk is a native of Armenia and will challenge Lukas in the number of foreign languages they are both fluent in!

Sergio Gutierrez Rodrigo - sergut@optics.rochester.edu Post Doc Sergio received his PhD degree from the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, on the optical properties of metallic nano-structures studied with the FDTD method. His current major research interest is in plasmonics and nonlinear optics at the nano-scale. He enjoys running, even though the conditions in Rochester are challenging him (snow, clear off!).

Palash Bharadwaj - palash@pas.rochester.edu Post Doc Palash just received his doctorate from the University of Rochester and continues his work on photon emission in nanosscale environments. He developed an experiment for monitoring the photon emission rate and the excited-state lifetime of a single molecule placed near a sharp metal needle. He obtained his Bachelors and Masters Degree from the EE Department at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay where he worked on Field Effects in Organic Semiconductors.

Brad Deutsch - bdeutsch@optics.rochester.edu Post Doc Brad did his graduate research under the supervision of Lukas working on near-field microscopy using silicon tips as well as direct measurement of the electromagnetic forces associated with near-field enhancement. He received his PhD degree in the Fall of 2011 and is currently working on particle trapping in vacuum. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL.

Ryan Beams - rbeams@optics.rochester.edu Graduate Student Ryan received a B.S. in Physics from Wheaton College near Chicago, IL in 2005. Currently, he is working on exploring the near-field properties of semiconductor quantum structures at low temperatures, around 1.2 K, through near-field microscopy.

Steve Person - person@optics.rochester.edu Graduate Student Steve received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Rochester and found his way back to the college to pursue his PhD after several years of being a vagabond, traveling the world and working at Lincoln Labs and ITT. Steve will focus on two-color nanoparticle detection.

Zack Lapin - lapin@optics.rochester.edu Graduate Student Zack received his B.S. from the Bates College and is working on optical imaging of membrane proteins.

Shawn Divitt - divitt@optics.rochester.edu Graduate Student Shawn received his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. His work focuses on optical rectification using nano-antennas.

Gul Seda Unal - unal.gseda@gmail.com Visiting Fulbright Student Seda is a visiting graduate student from Koc University in Turkey. She received a Fulbright Scholarship for a year-long research stay in our group and is studying patch antennas for the visible spectrum while her.

Dorilian Lopez Mago - dlopezma@optics.rochester.edu Visiting Graduate Student Dorilian is a graduate student from Tecnologico de Monterrey, in Mexico, where he works in the Photonics and Mathematical Optics Group. Currently, he is doing his research stay with our group. He is studying the generation and characterization of entangled photon pairs from parametric down-conversion in metal nanostructures.

Former Colleagues

Anirban Mitra - anirban@pas.rochester.edu Graduate Student Anirban received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, working on real-time and background-free detection of nanoparticles incorporating the heterodyne detection technique. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology,Kharagpur (India) in 2005. After completion of his doctorate he took a road trip with his wife across the country and started a new job at Intel in Portland, Oregon.

John F. Lesoine Graduate Student John was a graduate student with the Nanooptics grouop and received his doctorate in June 2010, after having received a B.S. in Physics from Moravian College in May 2003. He was applying fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) to study protein dynamics with the main interest is in optical methods applied to biophysics and biochemistry. He accepted a fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST in Gaithersburg, MD.

Christiane Hoeppener Post-Doc Christiane obtained her Ph.D. degree from University of Muenster, Germany in 2004, where she focused on the application of near-field optical microscopy in the field of biology under physiological conditions. She was continuing this work by investigations of transmembrane proteins in their natural environment. Since January 2010, Christiane is heading the NanoBiophotonik group at the University of Muenster, Germany.

Stefano Palomba Post-Doc Stefano received his PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, on nano-photonics and biophysics with size-selected clusters. He did focus his research on non-linear plasmonics and will continue to do so during his fellowship at UC Berkeley.

Gustavo Cancado Post-Doc Gustavo received his PhD from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on Raman spectroscopy of nanographites. His main focus during his work with the nano-optics group was on near-field optical spectroscopy of nano-graphitic systems such as graphene flakes and carbon nanotubes. He is now an assistant professor at his alma mater in Brazil.

Matthias Danckwerts Post-Doc After receiving his PhD from the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany, Matthias spend two years with the nano-optics group to extend his work to near-field optical spectroscopy and imaging of semiconductor quantum dots. Recently, he accepted a position with Carl Zeiss Micro Imaging in Germany.

Pascal Anger Post-Doc Pascal was building a low-temperature near-field instrument for the study of quantum effects in semiconductor nano-structures. The instrument works in liquid helium at temperatures down to 1.2K. Pascal was also interested in new approaches to nanoscale fabrication and lithography. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Siegen, Germany and worked for the Omicron company developing STM working in UHV and low temperatures. He left the group in February 2006 to pursue a career at SMT Zeiss in Germany.

Alexandre Bouhelier Post-Doc Alex worked on near-field nonlinear effects. He investigated second-harmonic generation and continuum generation in metal nanostructures. He joined the Argonne National Laboratory where he was working on nanoplasmonic structures. In the fall of 2005, he accepted a position at the "Laboratoire de Physique de l'Université de Bourgogne" in France, but keeps close ties to the nano-group by attending yearly workshops and collaborating in the labs.

Achim Hartschuh Post-Doc Achim worked on near-field Raman studies of carbon nanotubes while here at Rochester. He has returned to Germany to begin his academic appointment at the University of Siegen. In the meantime, Achim has moved on to the University of Tuebingen, where he continued to work with Prof. Meixner. In the spring of 2006, he was appointed Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich, Germany.

Andreas Lieb Post-Doc Andreas worked on conformational dynamics of single AE1 transmembrane proteins using single-pair fluoresecence resonance energy transfer (sp FRET) measurements. He moved back to Switzerland in 2004 where he joined the Nano-Optics group at the University of Basel.

Guillaume Lessard Post-Doc Guillaume received his Ph.D. from Caltech's Electrical Engineering department (May 2003). His thesis involved the development of an apertureless near-field microscope for the observation of fluorescence. By correlating detected photons with the vertical position of an oscillating AFM probe, the instrument achieved lateral resolutions of approximately 10nm when using CdSe quantum dots as a target. Guillaume moved on to work for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Neil Anderson Neil is the fourth student who received his PhD under the guidance of Prof. Novotny. Neil accepted a position with Bausch&Lomb, where he started to work as staff research scientist in September 2007.

Filipp Ignatovich Filipp received his doctorate from the Institute of Optics with his PhD thesis titled "Optical detection methods for nanoparticles and viruses" . He started to work for the local company Lumetrics in October 2006, but is still keeping close ties to the nano-optics group.

Michael Beversluis Mike worked on nonlinear near-field optical spectroscopy and the completion of his thesis. He started to work for NIST in January 2005.

Jorge Zurita-Sanchez Jorge was the first to receive his doctorate under the guidance of Prof. Novotny. He studied dissipative forces arising from thermal fields, and quantum dot interaction with nearfields and inhomegeneous beams. Currently, he is in Germany for a postdoctoral adventure at the University of Potsdam, Berlin.

Jean-Philippe Mulet Jean-Philippe did his doctoral research at Laboratoire EM2C, École Centrale Paris and then joined us as a postdoc to work on near-field coherence properties of thermal radiation.

Al Heaney Al did his PhD at the Institute of Optics and then came back to work as a postdoc on semiconductor materials using near-field optics. He joined the 3M company in 2004.

Qing Zhou Qing was a visiting Professor from Yunnan University. She worked on rotational dynamics of single-molecules.

Jean-Jacques Greffet Professor Greffet spent his sabbatical here while on leave from Ecole Centrale Paris. He is interested in coherence and spectral properties of optical near-fields.

Peter Gaertner During his visit to the Intitute of Optics, Peter worked on an experiment to image the three dimensional orientation of molecular dipole moments. He is with the University of Stuttgart.

Jan Renger During his visit to the Institute of Optics, Jan calculated field distributions on near-field tips using MMP (Multiple Multipole Program). Now he is working on his PhD on nanostructures at Technical University of Dresden at the Institute of Applied Photo Physics.

Nicole Putnam Nicole built an autocorrelator that employs a LED working as a two-photon detector. She is now working on her PhD at the University of Arizona.

Mi-Young (Molly) Park Molly worked on solid-state electrolysis for the formation of nano-apertures. She embarked on a Euro-Tour in 2004.