2020 ICFO PhD Thesis Awards
Two ICFO PhD graduates awarded for their creative and ambitious research
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.
In 2020, twenty-six 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 17th, the 2020 awards were presented to Dr Daniel Gonzalez Cuadra, in the theoretical field, and Dr Pamina Winkler, in the experimental field.
Award Citations:
Dr Daniel Gonzalez Cuadra: ICFO recognizes the exceptional doctoral thesis “A cold-atom approach to topological quantum matter across the energy scale”.
This thesis proposes innovative ways in which cold-atom systems might be used to realize novel topological phenomena, with rich connections to contemporary topics in both condensed matter and high-energy physics. The thesis is impressive in both the quality of work and the breadth and quantity of results, as evidenced by seven first-author papers in high-impact journals like Physical Review X, PRX Quantum, Nature Communications, and Physical Review Letters. The results reflect an outstanding combination of scientific creativity, maturity, and knowledge across several fields, and have attracted widespread interest and attention internationally.
Dr Pamina Winkler: ICFO recognizes the exceptional doctoral thesis “Novel planar photonic antennas to address the dynamic nanoarchitecture of biological membranes”.
This thesis pioneered a new research field in Nanophotonics focussed on the application of plasmonic antennas to monitor biological processes in living cells at ultrahigh spatiotemporal resolution. Dr Winkler rendered these nanodevices fully compatible with live cell imaging for the first time, and exploited them for different applications regarding the spatiotemporal organization of biological membranes, both mimetic systems and living cells. Using these devices she detected fluorescence fluctuations from the diffusion of individual molecules in regions of living cell membranes as small as 10nm in size with microsecond temporal resolution.
The thesis is impressive in both the quality of results, and the innovative contribution to interdisciplinary research. Her work has resulted in 8 publications in high impact journals such as Nano Letters, and ACS Nano, and led to two invited review articles based on her contributions. Notably, Dr Winkler established fruitful collaboration with researchers in France, Switzerland and India, and demonstrated impressive leadership throughout her time as a PhD Student.
The results reflect an outstanding combination of scientific creativity, maturity, and knowledge in both physics and biology, and have attracted widespread interest and attention internationally.
The entire ICFO community congratulates Daniel and Pamina for the dedication, hard work, and scientific insight that have earned them this ICFO 2020 PhD Award.