2021 ICFO PhD Thesis Awards

The ICFO PhD Thesis Award distinguishes particularly brilliant PhD theses presented at ICFO. With the award, ICFO wishes to highlight and reward extraordinary PhD students whose research progress at the institute has proven to be highly creative and ambitious. The award seeks to draw attention to the ICFOnians who have obtained particularly successful results and who have contributed to extend significantly the frontier of scientific and technological knowledge worldwide.​

In 2021, eighteen ICFO PhD students defended their theses at the institute. From this pool, the PhD Committee launched an in-depth deliberation to determine the recipients of the PhD Thesis Awards. During the annual ICFO Day event which took place on Friday December 16th, the 2021 awards were presented to Dr Niels Hesp and Dr Pau Gómez in the experimental field, and Dr Jonas Fischer in the industrial field.

Award Citations:

Dr Niels Hesp: ICFO recognizes the exceptional doctoral thesis “Exploring Twisted Bilayer Graphene with Nano-optics”.

Niels Hesp pioneered the study of twisted graphene nanophotonics. He installed and further developed a cryogenic near-field microscope, and used this to image for the first time optical excitations in twisted graphene, such as interband plasmons and nanoscale photocurrents revealing the moiré structure of the material system. The superresolution images obtained from this unique material system provided specific insight in the bandstructure of the material and details on how electrons tunnel between the different layers. This is of paramount importance in understanding the emergence of superconductivity and magnetism twisted two-dimensional materials.

Specific highlights of Niels’s thesis are the observations of plasmons in twisted bilayer graphene, the Moire imaging in small-angle twisted graphene, and the cryogenic nano-imaging of second-order moiré superlattices.

The exceptional quality of Niels’s work has received a widespread recognition by the international scientific community. These include publications in high level journals such as such as Nature Physics, Nature Nanotechnology, NanoLetters, Phys.Rev.Lett. and Nature Communications.  His PhD thesis manuscript demonstrates his creative experimental design and deep understanding of both the experimental and theoretical aspects of his work.

Dr Pau Gómez: ICFO recognizes the exceptional doctoral thesis “Spinor Bose-Einstein Comagnetometer and Interhyperfine Interactions in Rb87”.

Dr Gómez pioneered the use of Bose-Einstein condensates for measurements of weak spin-dependent forces, which include magnetic fields, but also many others of current interest, related to general relativity, parity violation, and dark matter.

His PhD thesis reports on techniques developed to use an 87Rb BEC in an optical trap to make a “comagnetometer,” a pair of magnetometers of different physical composition.  He first applied these techniques to measure the interhyperfine scattering lengths of 87Rb, which led to the most precise measurement of this basic property of 87Rb. He then developed the experimental methods to use the BEC as a comagnetometer by careful engineering of spin-dependent interactions (hyperfine relaxing collisions) to extend the coherence time of the spinor BEC.

The demonstrated sensitivity of this device, together with the small size of the BEC, make it interesting for searches for new physics, including spin-gravity couplings that arise in extensions to general relativity, and especially axions and axion-like particles (ALPs), which are well-motivated dark matter candidates.

Pau’s thesis thus made an important contribution to the field of precision measurement, with potential application in fundamental physics, and provided a fundamental study useful to the broader field of ultracold quantum gases.

During his PhD, Pau also contributed his skills with microcontrollers and FPGAs to a number of other projects in his research group, subsequently gave a course on the use of microcontrollers in experimental design, and more recently a course on FPGA programming for ICFO PhD students.

The exceptional quality of Pau’s work has received a widespread recognition by the international scientific community through publications in prestigious journals such as Physical Review Letters and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His PhD thesis manuscript demonstrated his creative thinking and deep understanding of both the experimental and theoretical aspects of his work.

Dr Jonas Fischer: ICFO recognizes the exceptional doctoral thesis “Transcranial Diffuse Optical Measurements of Pulsatility Derived Parameters for Neuromonitoring Applications". 

Jonas conducted a joint industrial PhD between ICFO and ICFO’s spin-off company HemoPhotonics. The thesis represents a major milestone in optical non-invasive measurements and contains pioneering work for the commercial translation of ICFO’s non-invasive monitoring technologies. He worked with two hospitals (Vall d’Hebron and Santa Creu i Sant Pau) in a wide range of different disciplines including neurology, neurosurgery, neurocritical care, pediatrics, anesthesiology and respiratory. His outstanding contributions range from a method to predict intracranial pressure, the assessment of cerebral autoregulation in traumatic brain injury and stroke, the identification of new biomarkers in stroke derived from pulsatile cerebral blood and studies of the effect of face masks on cerebral hemodynamics.

The methods developed are of highest quality and originality. He has combined the development of hardware and software with machine learning methods, advanced data processing and statistical analysis. The data was obtained in different clinical studies that he managed in collaboration with clinicians, on patients in Intensive Care Units & stroke units as well as on healthy volunteers.

Jonas’ hardware work has led to new products. He has developed critical components that are now embedded in both research devices and in HemoPhotonics products which allowed for the highest signal-to-noise-ratio and data throughput (speed) in diffuse correlation spectroscopy platforms.

His doctoral thesis is of great value, not only technologically, but also clinically. Medicine is evolving towards a less invasive and quantitative monitoring of patients. The thesis is a great step towards this end, providing highly relevant data in the non-invasive monitoring of intracranial pressure, a variable that currently is a "standard of care" for neurocritical patients. The obtained results stablished the need for the incorporation of these parameters in the clinical decision-making process. Also, the obtained results in the assessment of cerebral flux and self-regulation in ischemic stroke broaden a field of study in the evaluation and treatment of this prevalent pathology.

His impressive results and ideas, represented in one patent and 6 scientific publications in prestigious journals are the reflection of Jonas’ team player attitude. Research of this scale and magnitude can only be done in collaboration with others. Jonas has established strong collaborations with members of his group, with the HemoPhotonics’ team and with members of the Barcelona Medical Photonics Network.

The entire ICFO community congratulates Niels, Pau and Jonas for the dedication, hard work, and scientific insight that have earned them this ICFO 2021 PhD Award.