Nanophotonics with Diamond and Silicon Carbide for Quantum Technologies

Mario Agio studied physics at the University of Pavia, Italy, and Iowa State University, USA, and graduated in 2003 with a thesis on the fundamentals and applications of semiconductor-based photonic crystals. In 2004 he joined the Nano-Optics Group of Prof. Vahid Sandoghdar at ETH Zurich, where his research interests have broadened to single-molecule spectroscopy, near-field optics, and quantum optics. He was awarded the Prize of the Italian Physical Society for graduate students (2002) and the Latsis Prize of ETH Zurich (2010) for his accomplishments in nano optics. In 2011 he received the Habilitation in Physical Chemistry from ETH Zurich, where he has been Privat Dozent until 2016. From 2012 to 2015, he was with the National Institute of Optics (CNR-INO) and the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS) in Florence, Italy. Since April 2015 he is responsible for the Laboratory of Nano-Optics at the University of Siegen, Germany, and since April 2021 he also holds a part-time appointment with CNR-INO.

Stefania Castelletto is associate professor and deputy associate dean in the School of Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a Dottorato di Ricerca (PhD equivalent) from the School of Engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy) and she has a habilitation as Professor of Experimental and Applied Physics from the Italian Ministry of Education and Research. Before her current academic appointment, she covered various research positions as Senior Fellow at Macquarie University (Sydney), Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne) and The University of Melbourne. She was part of an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for engineered quantum systems. Earlier in her career, she was group leader at the Italian National Metrology Research Centre (INRIM) and responsible for the research and development of quantum technologies based on non-classical states of light, such as quantum cryptography and quantum imaging. She has been visiting scientist at the National Institute of Technology and Standards (USA) for two years. Her recent research focus is on color centers in diamond and silicon carbide for applications in quantum sensing, single photon sources and super-resolution imaging.