Researchers

Germaine Arend (Göttingen)

Germaine Arend is a Ph.D. student in the group of Prof. Claus Ropers at the University of Göttingen and the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. She works on electron-photon interactions at photonic cavities inside of a TEM. Her Master’s thesis was done in the group of Prof. Stefan Mathias (University of Göttingen) where she worked on optical High Harmonic Generation systems.

Yves Auad (Paris)

Currently a PhD student interested in nano optics with high spatial resolution. During my master’s I worked in the development of a light collection mirror for a scanning tunneling microscope, while in my thesis I work using a similar system for light injection in a scanning transmission electron microscope.

Jassem Baaboura (Paris)

Jassem Baaboura is a PhD student supervised by Luiz Tizei in the STEM group at LPS at the Paris-Saclay University. During his masters at the University of Montpellier, he studied condensed matter physics and its application in functional materials. His PhD research is focused on the study of spin-valley states in transitional metal dichalcogenides using energy electrons loss spectroscopy and cathodoluminescence in a scanning transmission electron microscope.

Malo Bézard (Paris)

Malo Bézard is a PhD student in the STEM group of the Solid State Laboratory (Paris-Saclay University, France) supervised by Mathieu Kociak.
He studied Nano and Quantum Optics during his Master’s degree at the Paris-Saclay University, and he is now working on how to access polarisation at the nanoscale on 3D-chiral plasmonic excitations using an electron microscope. To do so he is mainly using Electron Energy Loss and Cathodoluminescence spectroscopies.

Gabriele Bongiovanni (Thermo Fisher Scientific)

Gabriele Bongiovanni is a postdoctoral researcher in the Advanced Technology group at Thermo Fisher Scientific where he works on the development of a pump-probe setup for ultrafast electron microscopy. He obtained his Ph.D. from EPFL in March 2023 in the group of Prof. Ulrich Lorenz. His thesis was on the development of methods to image irreversible microsecond nanodynamics in a transmission electron microscope with (near-)atomic spatial resolution, with applications ranging from materials science to protein dynamics. He had previously obtained a joint master’s degree in Nanotechnologies for ICTs from Politecnico di Torino, Grenoble INP and EPFL.

Noémie Bonnet (Delmic)

Noémie Bonnet is an Application Specialist at Delmic in the Netherlands. During her PhD at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (LPS) in Orsay (2018-2022), under the supervision of Luiz Tizei and Mathieu Kociak, she studied the optical properties of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides and nitrogen-vacancy centers in nanodiamonds, using scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques including cathodoluminescence, photoluminescence, electron energy-loss spectroscopy, µ-diffraction and the usual STEM imaging techniques. She also has previous experience in ultrafast optical spectroscopy from various labs in Université Paris-Saclay, from internships, bachelor and master’s theses (Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d’Orsay – ISMO, laboratoire de Photophysique et Photochimie Supramoléculaire et Macromoléculare – PPSM, laboratoire de photonique quantique et moléculaire – LPQM, and laboratoire Aimé Cotton – LAC).

Fatemeh Chahshuri (Kiel)

Fatemeh Chahshuri is a PhD student in in the group of Prof. Nahid Talebi, at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel. During her master studies at the University of Tehran, she synthesized and characterized nanocrystalline structures for applications in gas sensing in high vacuum conditions. Her PhD works concerns exploring light-electron interactions in an ultrafast electron microscope.

Armin Feist (Göttingen)

Armin Feist is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Claus Ropers at the University of Göttingen and the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysical Chemistry. His Ph.D. work focused on the development and application of Ultrafast TEM using coherent electron pulses.  He studied in Leipzig, Leeds and Göttingen, and his B.Sc. and M.Sc. theses addressed angle-resolved fluorescence in photonic crystals and laser-triggered field ion microscopy, respectively. His current research interests include nanoscale structural dynamics, optically tailored free-electron beams and the exploration of new instrumental capabilities in UTEM, with the vision of combining methods from ultrafast science with state-of-the-art electron microscopy.

Saskia Fiedler (AMOLF)

Saskia Fiedler has recently joined the group of Prof. Albert Polman at AMOLF as a postdoctoral researcher. She received her Physics degree (equivalent to MSc) from Free University Berlin, Germany where she performed optical near-field microscopy on biological samples as part of her thesis in the group of Prof. Paul Fumagalli. Afterwards, most of her work has revolved around electron microscopy with the main focus on cathodoluminescence (CL) and photoluminescence spectroscopy of various nanostructured materials. During her PhD at University of Technology Sydney, Australia in the group of Prof. Matthew R. Phillips, she designed and built laser light injection into the existing SEM-CL system to study the coupling mechanism of plasmons and excitons in wide bandgap semiconductor nanorods. Her first Postdoc in the group of N. Asger Mortensen at the Southern University of Denmark focused more on coherent CL experiments, investigating plasmonic and dielectric nanostructures, as well as the expansion of the SEM to allow for autocorrelation measurements of 2D materials and single photon emitters.

Sangeetha Hari (Delmic)

Sangeetha Hari is an Applications Specialist at Delmic BV. She develops cathodoluminescence imaging and correlative light and electron microscopy for various applications. She obtained her PhD in 2017 from the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the TU Delft in “High resolution resist-free lithography in the SEM”. Her research experience includes gas phase electron-molecule collisions and  time of flight spectroscopy.

Matthias Liebtrau (AMOLF)

Matthias Liebtrau is a PhD student in the group of Prof. Albert Polman at AMOLF in Amsterdam (the Netherlands). His research is focused on cathodoluminescence spectroscopy and low-energy photon-induced near-field electron microscopy to study coherent electron-light-matter interactions at the nanoscale. Matthias obtained his Master’s degree in Experimental Physics from the University of Bonn (Germany). He did his Master’s thesis research in the group of Prof. Stefan Linden, where he was working on experimental near-field characterization of plasmonic slot waveguides.

Mark van Rijt (Thermo Fisher Scientific)

Mark van Rijt is a postdoctoral researcher at the Advanced Technologies group in the Materials & Structural Analysis Division of Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he works on strategies to reduce electron beam damage in sensitive materials. In 2017 he obtained his Master’s degree at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) writing his thesis on the Self-Assembly of Block Copolypeptides studied by CryoTEM at the Laboratory of Materials and Interface Chemistry. Subsequent, he obtained his PhD in 2021 at the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry at TU/e where he worked towards the mineralization of organic templates with zinc oxide while using a variety of EM strategies to investigate this process.

Hoelen Lalandec-Robert (Antwerp)

Hoelen L. Lalandec-Robert is a post-doctoral researcher in the EMAT group of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and is a part of Prof. Dr. Jo Verbeeck’s team. She previously worked as a doctoral researcher in the Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) of the Research Centre Jülich, Germany, where she focused on the development of new quantitative 4D-STEM methods, the role of bulk plasmon excitation on low-angle electron scattering and the comparative influence of optical parameters on different STEM signals. Before that, she studied in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and did her Master thesis in the Nanocharacterisation platform of the CEA Grenoble. Her current research interests include the development of ultra-low-dose STEM-based imaging methods, ptychography, applications of event-driven detection and other quantitative TEM methods.

Luca Serafini (Antwerp)

Luca Serafini is a PhD student at the EMAT group of the University of Antwerp in Belgium, conducting research under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jo Verbeeck. He holds a Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Antwerp, where he completed his thesis on the construction, characterization, and simulation of a high-speed electrostatic blanker for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Jo Verbeeck. Currently, Luca’s focus lies in the development of techniques for radio-frequency and microwave spectroscopy within the electron microscope utilizing pulsed electron beams and fast event-based detectors.

Patrick Späth (AMOLF)

Patrick Späth is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Wiebke Albrecht at AMOLF. During his PhD, he developed an optical technique to study circular dichroism of single nanoparticles via photothermal imaging. Within the EBEAM project, he wants to combine cathodoluminescence spectroscopy with optical excitation to study heat generation and transport of single plasmonic nanoparticles resolved in time and space.

Odile Stéphan (Paris)

Odile Stéphan is a Professor of physics at University Paris-Sud and an honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She is currently leading the STEM group at the Orsay Solid State Physics Laboratory. Her research interests span from growth mechanisms to optical and electronic properties of various nanostructures and nanomaterials. She focuses on the development and the use of Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy in a Transmission Electron Microscope and derived innovative spectroscopy techniques to probe at the nanometer scale the structural electronic and optical properties of original nanostructures like nanotubes and related nanostructures, nanophotonics objects, molecular magnets and to explore new physics phenomena at low dimensions (plasmon coupling, electron magnetic field confinement and exaltation). She has been awarded the Ancel Price of the Physical French Society in 2012 for her achievements in condensed matter physics.

Masoud Taleb (Kiel)

Masoud Taleb is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Nahid Talebi, at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel. He obtained his PhD in materials science (2018) with the focus on development of nanoclusters and surface decoration of 2D materials for tuning their physical/chemical properties. His current research interests include strong coupling and plasmonics; studying exciton-photon and exciton-plasmon quasiparticle formations using Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy and angle-resolved mapping. He is additionally responsible for the electron microscopy lab and sample-preparation procedures.

Luiz Tizei (Paris)

Luiz Tizei has a Bachelor in Physics (2005) from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil). In 2011, he finished his PhD thesis at the same institute, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Ugarte. He then joined the STEM group at the LPS (Orsay, France) for a post-doc between 2011 and 2013, during which he built a light intensity interferometer to detect single photon sources excited by fast electrons (cathodoluminescence) in an electron microscope. In late 2013 he left the STEM group and joined Kazu Suenaga at the AIST (Tsukuba, Japan) for a post-doc, during which he studied the physical and chemical properties of low dimensionality structures (single atoms, carbon nanotubes, atomic chains, 2D monolayers). He was hired at the CNRS in December 2014. His research is focused on the development of electron spectroscopy techniques and their application to nanooptics.

Steffi Woo (Paris)

Steffi Woo is a post-doctoral researcher in the STEM group at the LPS in Orsay (France). She has a B.Eng. in Materials Engineering and Society with a minor in Chemistry from McMaster University (Canada). She obtained her M.A.Sc. in Materials Engineering for her thesis work on the characterization of extended defects in group III-V semiconductor thin films by conventional TEM also at McMaster University in the group of Prof. Gianluigi Botton. Her Ph.D. work focused on the structural and chemical variations in group III-nitride nanowire heterostructures, also supervised by Prof. Botton. Her current research activities revolve around the optical response of 2D materials, including h-BN and transition metal dichalcogenides, using electronic energy-loss spectroscopy and cathodoluminescence.