Lorenzo Pavesi

Biography

Lorenzo Pavesi is Professor of Experimental Physics, headand dean of the Department of Physics at at the University of Trento (Italy). Born the 21st of November 1961, he received his PhD in Physics in 1990 at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale of Lausanne (Switzerland). In 1990 he became Assistant Professor, an Associate Professor in 1999 and Full Professor in 2002 at the University of Trento. He leads the Nanoscience Laboratory (25 people), teaches several classes at the Science Faculty of the University of Trento. He founded the research activity in semiconductor optoelectronics at the University of Trento and started several laboratories of photonics, growth and advanced treatment of materials. He was the first president and founder of the IEEE italian chapter on Nanotechnology. He has directed more than 25 PhD students and more than 25 Master thesis students. His research activity concerned the optical properties of semiconductors. During the last years, he concentrated on Silicon based photonics where he looks for the convergence between photonics and electronics by using silicon nanostructures. He is interested in active photonics devices which can be integrated in silicon by using classical waveguides or novel waveguides such as those based on dynamical photonic crystals. His interests encompass also optical sensors or biosensors and solar cells. In silicon photonics, he is one of the worldwide recognized experts, he organized several international conferences, workshops and schools and is a frequently invited speaker. He manages several research projects, both national and international. He advises EC on photonics and is a frequently invited reviewer, monitor or referee for photonics projects by several grant agencies. He is an author or co-author of more than 280 papers, author of several reviews, editor of more than 10 books, author of 2 books and holds six patents. He is in the editorial board of Research Letters in Physics and he was in the editorial board of Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies, in the directive council of the LENS (Florence), in the Board of Delegates of E-MRS. In 2001 he was awarded the title of Cavaliere by the Italian President for scientific merit. In 2010 and 2011 he was elected distinguished speaker of the IEEE- Photonics society. He holds an H-number of 48 according to the web of science.

Education

PhD in optoelectronics from the EPFL in 1990

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

His main area of research is nanophotonics, silicon-based photonics and nanobiotechnologies. He is interested to generate new knowledge, new applications and new devices by understanding the physical phenomena which occurs at the nanoscale. In particular, he works on applying the nanoscience paradigm to silicon or silicon compatible materials to enable new uses of these key materials, and to develop nanosystems compatible with the main driving silicon technologies. However, silicon is not the only material studied. Other field of interest concerns the use of polymers to tailor the properties of nanostructure atom-by-atom or the use of metals to investigate new properties which rise from plasmonics.
The research projects span from fundamental research work on the interaction between biomolecules and silicon nanostructures or on the control of photons by dynamically structuring the dielectric environment, to more applied research work on the development of integrated optical circuits, optical switches, light emitting devices and amplifiers, novel MIR sources, third generation photovoltaic and biosensors.

Books