Members

Nicolas Grandjean received a PhD degree in Physics from the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis in 1994 and shortly after joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a permanent staff member. In 2004, he was appointed tenure-track Assistant Professor at the EPFL and promoted Full Professor in 2009. From 2012 to 2015 he was heading the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics. In 2016, he was visiting professor at the UCSB. He was awarded the Sandoz Family Foundation grant for Academic Promotion and received the “Nakamura Lecturer” Award in 2010 and the “Quantum Devices Award” at the 2017 Compound Semiconductor Week. His research interests are the physics and technology of III-V nitride semiconductors. CV available here

Raphaël Butté was born in Paris, France, in 1973. He received the PhD degree from the University Claude Bernard, Lyon, France, in 2000 for his research on the structural and optoelectronic properties of hydrogenated nanostructured silicon thin films with potential applications for photovoltaics and thin film transistors.

He then moved to the University of Sheffield (2000-2003), UK, to work as postdoctoral research associate in the group of Prof. Maurice S. Skolnick (Fellow of the Royal Society).

His research shifted to the optical properties of III-V semiconductors with a main focus on the nonlinear optical properties of cavity polaritons occurring in GaAs-based microcavities driven under resonant optical excitation.

In 2004, he moved to Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) as scientific collaborator in charge of optical spectroscopy at LASPE, a newly established laboratory directed by Prof. Nicolas Grandjean.

In 2010, he became permanent member of staff (Scientific Collaborator and Lecturer). He was promoted to the position of Senior Scientist in 2016.

His current research activity deals with planar waveguides, microdisks and photonic crystals made from III-nitride semiconductors. In particular, he is leading the activity focusing on: (i) the physics of exciton-polaritons in planar waveguides and (ii) high-β photonic crystal nanolasers.

He is the author of 104 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed international journals, 14 publications published in peer reviewed journals following an international conference (> 3500 citations, h-index: 30) and 6 book chapters.

He has given 28 invited talks in International Conferences/Winter-Summer Schools/Workshops.

He has been the Publications Chair/Guest Editor of the Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Nitride semiconductors (IWN2008) and also served as Scientific Secretary of IWN2008 and of the 5th International Conference on Spontaneous Coherence in Excitonic Systems (ICSCE5).

In 2012, he was one of the 149 scientists recognized by the Outstanding Referee program (http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees) of the American Physical Society (APS) selected from a pool of roughly 60,000 currently active referees.

From September 2013 until December 2017, he was one of the Editors of the journal “Superlattices and Microstructures” (Elsevier).

Since September 2015 he is a member of the Physics Doctoral School Teaching Committee. He was also a member of the EPFL Teaching Conference from September 2015 until August 2017. CV available here

Yao Chen received her BSc and MEng degree in materials science and engineering at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). During the last year of her master, she worked on the blue LEDs featured with GaN-based tunnel junction contacts for her master project at the Laboratory of advanced semiconductors for photonics and electronics (LASPE). Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in photonics at EPFL.

Danxuan Chen received her BSc degree in physics at the University of Wuhan and the University of Lyon (a four-year double diploma program). After that, she did a MSc in applied physics at EPFL. During her master project at LASPE, she studied the defects in InGaN quantum wells. After graduation, she worked as a software engineer at Attolight (Lausanne) to improve their software for cathodoluminescence analysis. She is currently pursuing her PhD in physics at EPFL.

Johann Stachurski attended a prep school in France (Lycée Joffre) before joining EPFL at the end of his bachelor’s degree. He received his BSc and MSc degree at EPFL in 2019. During his master project, he worked on the characterization of GaN quantum dots using micro-photoluminescence techniques. He is pursuing his PhD in the Laboratory of Advanced Semiconductors for Photonics and Electronics (LASPE).

Nadja Dekumbis started working at EPFL in 2009 as an apprentice in business administration in Mathematics institute and she received her diploma in August 2012.
Since November 2012, she has been working in physics as a secretary for Professor Nicolas Grandjean’s laboratory. (LASPE)