Professor Alessia Pasquazi (PhD 2009 in Electronic Engineering University ‘Roma Tre’) is an expert in nonlinear optics, she is fascinated by how light interacts with light, mimicking often living systems.
Her focus is on applying such a physics to practical ultrafast photonic technologies and she is a relevant expert in the field of microcombs. She has been MELS fellow (Quebec, Canada) from 2010-2011 and EU Marie-Curie Fellow from 2013-2015, Ernest Rutherford Fellow (2018-2023), ERC Starting Grant Laureate (2020-2024).
She joined Loughborough in 2022 from the University of Sussex where she was Co-Director of the Emergent Photonics laboratory.
Nonlinearity makes things alive and interesting. In optics, it makes the photons communicate and mix, mimicking many processes that we see in the natural world.
This physics is a powerful tool for photonic engineering and is shaping many areas of our everyday life, from the internet to healthcare, and of the most advanced tech, from space exploration to quantum technologies. Microcombs are a perfect example of this technology. Optical frequency combs are exceptional ‘optical rulers’, capable of detecting exoplanets, precisely scanning the human breath and accurately measuring time.
Microcombs bring these functionalities on small microchips and are a building block of a new generation of quantum sensors, with applications spanning from portable navigators to ultramodern communication systems.
Alessia regularly serves in national and international grant panels, EU-Marie curie, EU-RISE, UKRI-Future Leader Fellowship panels and I assess projects for several councils of different countries, including the UK EPSRC. She serves as chair and member in different scientific committees of OSA, SPIE, and IOP. She was General Chair (2020) and Program Chair (2018) for the OSA Nonlinear Photonics Conference, and currently chairs the Nonlinear Phenomena, Solitons and Self-organization for CLEO EU 2023. She worked in several research consortia (Q-Hub for Sensor and Metrology, UK, ARC COMBS, Australia) and she is presently working on the following research projects:
2022-2027 QT Innovate UK . ‘CIFS - Calcium Ion Frequency Standard.’ Sussex Led,
2021-2024 UK Canada QT Innovate UK. ‘Development of highly efficient, portable, and fiber-integrated photonic platforms based on micro-resonator.’ With Sussex and INRS-EMT.
2020-2025 EU-ERC Starting grant, ‘Temporal laser cavity solitons microcombs (TELSECOMBE), European Union, PI.
2019-2023 EPSRC - UKRI Innovation Fellowship, ‘Industrial Pathway to Micro-Comb Lasers’, PI.
2019-2023 Demonstrator of a Micro-Comb Lasers for Portable Atomic Clock, Dstl-Defence Science & Technology Laboratory studentship.
She regularly participates in outreach events
Public Lectures
A. Pasquazi, A journey through quantum technology, at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, May 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxirhGeSqVQ
A. Pasquazi, Register Lecture: Can portable Atomic Clocks end UK dependency on GNSS?, London, Rugby Tavern Pub, Jan 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=lLBKvw6gMDw&feature=emb_logo
A. Pasquazi, A journey through quantum technology, at the ‘"The Nature of Quantum Reality" One-Day Conference, St Cross College, Centre for History and Philosophy of Physics, University of Oxford (UK), 10th June 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMpfy2iw5qc).
Other Public Engagement
The EPic Lab produced an outreach video “Laser Cavity-Solitons Microcombs” on The video has been completely funded and produced in-house. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRlkMJP_sI
She routinely participates and promote student-led conferences and activities and contributed to a number of public events. Among them, she was interviewed for the
‘She can STEM’ project’ in 2021
https://www.facebook.com/shecanstemsussexuniversity/videos/445029226734043/
Antonio Cutrona, Maxwell Rowley, Debayan Das, Luana Olivieri, Luke Peters, Sai T. Chu, Brent E. Little, Roberto Morandotti, David J. Moss, Juan Sebastian Totero Gongora, Marco Peccianti, and Alessia Pasquazi, "High parametric efficiency in laser cavity-soliton microcombs," Opt. Express 30, 39816-39825 (2022)
Rowley, M., Hanzard, P.-H., Cutrona, A., Bao, H., Chu, S.T., Little, B.E., Morandotti, R., Moss, D.J., Oppo, G.-L., Totero Gongora, J.S., Peccianti, M., Pasquazi, A. Self-emergence of robust solitons in a microcavity (2022) Nature, 608 (7922), pp. 303-309.
Godin, T., Sader, L., Khodadad Kashi, A., Hanzard, P.-H., Hideur, A., Moss, D.J., Morandotti, R., Genty, G., Dudley, J.M., Pasquazi, A., Kues, M., Wetzel, B. Recent advances on time-stretch dispersive Fourier transform and its applications (2022) Advances in Physics: X, 7 (1), art. no. 2067487.
Pasquazi, A. Optomechanics joins the soliton club (2021) Nature Physics, 17 (12), pp. 1285-1286.
Cutrona, A., Hanzard, P.-H., Rowley, M., Totero-Gongora, J.S., Peccianti, M., Malomed, B.A., Oppo, G.-L., Pasquazi, A. Temporal cavity solitons in a laser-based microcomb: A path to a self-starting pulsed laser without saturable absorption
Bao, H., Olivieri, L., Rowley, M., Chu, S.T., Little, B.E., Morandotti, R., Moss, D.J., Totero Gongora, J.S., Peccianti, M., Pasquazi, A. Turing patterns in a fiber laser with a nested microresonator: Robust and controllable microcomb generation (2020) Physical Review Research, 2 (2), art. no. 023395.
Bao, H., Cooper, A., Rowley, M., Di Lauro, L., Totero Gongora, J.S., Chu, S.T., Little, B.E., Oppo, G.-L., Morandotti, R., Moss, D.J., Wetzel, B., Peccianti, M., Pasquazi, A. Laser cavity-soliton microcombs (2019) Nature Photonics, 13 (6), pp. 384-389.
Rowley, M., Wetzel, B., Lauro, L.D., Totero Gongora, J.S., Bao, H., Silver, J., Bino, L.D., Del'Haye, P., Peccianti, M., Pasquazi, A. Thermo-optical pulsing in a microresonator filtered fiber-laser: A route towards all-optical control and synchronization (2019) Optics Letters, 27 (14), pp. 19242-19253.
Wetzel, B., Kues, M., Roztocki, P., Reimer, C., Godin, P.-L., Rowley, M., Little, B.E., Chu, S.T., Viktorov, E.A., Moss, D.J., Pasquazi, A., Peccianti, M., Morandotti, R. Customizing supercontinuum generation via on-chip adaptive temporal pulse-splitting (2018) Nature Communications, 9 (1), art. no. 4884, .
Bao, H., Cooper, A., Chu, S.T., Moss, D.J., Morandotti, R., Little, B.E., Peccianti, M., Pasquazi, A. Type-II micro-comb generation in a filter-driven four wave mixing laser [invited] (2018) Photonics Research, 6 (5), pp. B67-B73.
Pasquazi, A., Peccianti, M., Razzari, L., Moss, D.J., Coen, S., Erkintalo, M., Chembo, Y.K., Hansson, T., Wabnitz, S., Del'Haye, P., Xue, X., Weiner, A.M., Morandotti, R. Micro-combs: A novel generation of optical sources (2018) Physics Reports, 729, pp. 1-81.