Last friday 11th I was invited to give a talk at the LaserLab Conference 2019. It was a great oportunity to showcase a bit of the work that we have been doing in the last years regarding harsh-environment photonic sensors and 3D nanophotonics, but most importantly, it gave me a great chance to meet the people behind Laserlab Europe.
Laserlab-Europe is a consortium of european laser research infrastructures. By today, Laserlab brings together 33 leading organisations in laser-based inter-disciplinary research from 16 countries. Together with associate partners, Laserlab covers the majority of European member states. 22 facilities which offer access to their labs for research teams from anywhere in the world.
In my case, I succesfully applied for a project in 2015 which was awarded. The project was called “3D nanostructuring of YAG laser crystals for novel active photonics” (yes, I should have included an acronym!), at the Centre for Ultrafast Science and Biomedical Optics (CUSBO) Laserlab partner in Milano, Italy. That project allowed me to discover the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology (IFN-CNR) at Milano, and also the Politecnico di Milano University (POLIMI), on which later I would go to work for almost 3 years, together with Roberto Osellame and his fantastic group of people (the FAST group).
The 2015 Laserlab project was therefore a crucial step in my scientific career, and so I can say that the Laserlab initiative is another one great example of how the European Union’s Horizon 2020 public program is so important to european science and our society as a whole.
Long life to Laserlab!!!
Light-matter interactions and Extreme Application Photonics Laboratory 