Education and Working Experience

Dates Position/Activity
1992 – 2000 High School (BG 19, Vienna, Austria)
Jan – Jun 1999 Exchange student in Fayetteville, AR, USA
2000 – 2006 Physics student at Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
Jul – Aug 2002 Internship at CTR (Carinthian Tech Research), Villach, Austria
2002 – 2005 Teaching assistant in Physics at the Vienna University of Technology
2003 – 2004 Erasmus exchange student at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
2005 – 2006 Master thesis “Transport through quantum wires with surface disorder”, advisors: S. Rotter and J. Burgdörfer
Jul – Sep 2005 Summer Student at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, advisor: G. Folger
Mar 2006 Master’s degree (Dipl.-Ing.) with distinction
Mar 2006 – Sep 2009 University Assistant and Ph.D. student at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology as a member of the International Max Planck Research School on Advanced Photon Science, advisor: J. Burgdörfer
Nov – Dec 2006 Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA
Sep 2009 Ph.D. degree (Dr.) with distinction
Oct 2009 – Oct 2012 Postdoctoral Fellow at ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Harvard Physics Department
Oct 2012 – Mar 2017 Postdoc in the Nanophotonics Group at the Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Apr 2017 – Dec 2017 IFIMAC Young Researcher at the Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Jan 2018 – Dec 2022 Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada and at the Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Dec 2022 – Sep 2025 Associate Professor (Profesor Contratado Doctor) at the Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada and at the Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Sep 2025 – present Associate Professor (Profesor Titular) at the Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada and at the Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Prizes

Dates Award
Jan 2007 Diploma Thesis Prize of the City of Vienna
Feb 2007 IOP Student Travel Prize in Electron Interactions with Atoms and Molecules
Jul 2017 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics

Grants

Dates Grant
2011 – 2014 Co-PI of NSF TeraGrid and XSEDE grants on Computational Studies of the Interaction of Time-Dependent Electromagnetic Fields and Charged Particles with Atoms and Molecules for more than 55 million CPU hours
2014 – 2017 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant StroCOMP: Strong Coupling of Organic Molecules and Plasmons (87,500 €)
2015 – 2018 Co-PI on Grant “Quantum Phenomena in Plasmonics” of the Spanish Secretariat of State for Research, Development and Innovation within the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (100,000 €)
2017 – 2023 PI of ERC Starting Grant ERC-2016-StG-714870 MMUSCLES on Modification of Molecular Structure Under Strong Coupling to Confined Light Modes (1,499,500 €)
2018 – 2022 Ramón y Cajal grant of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness (308,600 €)
2019 – 2021 Co-PI on Grant “Quantum Polaritonic Technologies” of the State Research Agency (AEI) of the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation, and Universities (157,300 €)
2020 – 2021 PI of four computational projects on “Ultrafast atomic & molecular processes driven by classical & quantized light”, Red Española de Supercomputación, 3.6 million CPU hours
2022 – 2024 Co-PI on Grant “Manipulating matter through vacuum fields” of the State Research Agency (AEI) (237,160 €)
2022 PI of computational project on “Ultrafast chiral and polaritonic spectroscopy”, Red Española de Supercomputación, 2.3 million CPU hours
2022 – 2025 Leading Scientist at Coordinating Institution (UAM) for EU grant MIRAQLS on Mid-infrared quantum technology for sensing (Total: 2,662,604 €, UAM contribution: 300,000 €)
2023 – 2026 PI at UAM for EIC Pathfinder grant SCOLED on Strong-coupling-enhanced nanoparticle array organic light emitting diode (Total: 2,621,998 €, UAM contribution: 87,500 €)
2023 – 2025 PI of Grant MAQUINA on Mapping between Quantum Optics and Nanophotonics of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (100,000 €)
2024 – 2026 PI of Grant HELIOS on Harnessing extreme light sources of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (199,892 €)
2025 – 2028 PI of Grant QUALIMAX on Quantum light-matter interactions on extreme scales of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (218,750 €)

Supervision

I have supervised 10 PhD students (5 finished, 5 ongoing), as well as 14 postdocs (12 finished, 2 ongoing). I have also supervised more than 20 Master and Bachelor theses.

Professional Activities

Dates Activity
2012–2014 Member of the XSEDE User Advisory Committee
Nov. 2014 Organizer of CECAM workshop on “Electron Dynamics on Surfaces and Nanostructures” in Zaragoza, Spain
Sep. 2018 Organizer of XXV International Summer School “Nicolás Cabrera” on “Manipulating Light and Matter at the Nanoscale” in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain
May 2019 Member of the Scientific Committee, TERAMETANANO-4 in Lecce, Italy
Jul. 2019 Organizer of the workshop “Molecular Polaritonics 2019: Theoretical and Numerical Approaches” in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain
since 2021 Member of the Equality Commission of IFIMAC, UAM
since 2022 Member of the Physical Review A Editorial Board
Sep. 2022 Organizer of the workshop “Molecular Polaritonics 2022: Theoretical and Numerical Approaches” in Straubing, Germany
Sep. 2025 Organizer of the workshop “Molecular Polaritonics 2025” in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain

Review Activities

Reviewer of >200 articles for journals including Science, Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Physical Review X, Physical Review Letters, Optica, and many others.

Reviewer for >50 project proposals for funding agencies including European Research Council (EU), National Science Foundation (USA), Department of Energy (USA), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France), Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (Austria), Israeli Science Foundation (Israel), Swiss National Science Foundation (Switzerland), and others.