Lessons learned by renowned Women in Photonics

Prof. Laura Na Liu received her Ph. D in Physics at University of Stuttgart. She then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and as a Texas Instruments visiting professor at Rice University, respectively. Before she became a professor at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at University of Heidelberg in 2015, she had worked as an independent group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. In 2020, she joined University of Stuttgart and became the Director of the 2. Physics Institute.   

Her research interest is multi-disciplinary. She works at the interface between nanophotonics, biology, and chemistry. Her group focuses on developing sophisticated and smart optical nanosystems for answering structural biology questions as well as catalytic chemistry questions in local environments.  

Dr. Liu has received several prestigious awards such as, in 2014 she was awarded with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Award from the German Research Foundation as well as an ERC starting grant from the European Research Council. She was also honored with the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics from the International Commission for Optics in 2016, the Rudolf-Kaiser Prize in 2018, the Kavli Foundation Early Career Award in Materials Science 2018, the Adolph Lomb Medal in 2019, the Rising Researcher Award (SPIE) in 2019, the EU-40 Materials Prize (E-MRS) in 2019, Fellow of the Max Planck School Matter to Life in 2019 and the Nano Letters Young Investigator Lectureship Award in 2019. In 2018 and 2019 she was also honored with Highly Cited Researcher by the Web of Science. In 2020, she was nominated as Max Planck Fellow and OSA fellow. 

Prof. Liu encourages anyone who would like to pursue a career in photonics to familiarize themselves with some classical literature on the topic, to name few; ‘Plasmonics: Fundamentals and Applications’ by Stefan Maier and ‘Principles of Nano-optics’ by Lukas Novotny. In Prof. Liu’s experience, women were unfortunately underestimated at times. Her advice for other women in the field is “at first be sure what you want to do in your life; once the decision is made, be very focused and make your signature contributions to the field.” 

Dr. Camille-Sophie Bres is an Associate professor at the Institute of Electrical Engineering within the School of Engineering of EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2002, She obtained her B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In 2007, She obtained her PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, New Jersey, United States. From 2007 to 2011, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California San Diego, United States, within the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  In July 2011 she joined the Institute of Electrical Engineering at EPFL as a tenure track assistant professor and head of the Photonic Systems Laboratory and was promoted to associate professor in 2019. Her research interests are centred on leveraging and enhancing nonlinear optical processes in waveguides for ultrafast signal processing, light generation and sensing. Along her leading her research group, she is also passionate about teaching. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate students educating future engineers and scientists. 

In 2002, she received the Gordon Wu Fellowship for her graduate studies, and the NSF CIANs Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2009. She was awarded an ERC starting Grant MATTISSE in 2012, ERC consolidator grant PISSARRO in 2017 and ERC proof-of-concept grant SWIP in 2019. In 2020 she became an OSA. 

As a woman in photonics, she believes that this field is still dominated by men, and women face unconscious biases, and maybe even some conscious ones. Her advice for other women in the area is that “If you are passionate about making a career in photonics, the opportunities are there. So, try to put aside doubts or uncertainties if there are any. After all, there are many very well established and successful women in photonics!” 

Dr. Francesca Calegari is a professor of physics at the University of Hamburg and she leads the Attosecond Science division at DESY. She obtained her M.Sc. degree in Physics, from the University of Milan (Università degli Studi di Milano) Milan, Italy in 2005. In 2009, She obtained her PhD degree in Physics from the Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano), Milan, Italy. She worked as a Staff researcher at the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies (IFN) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Milan, Italy almost for 5 years (Dec 2011 – Aug 2016) 

In 2017, she received ICO prize and the Ernst Abbe medal from the International Commission of Optics. She also received ERC starting grant, STARLIGHT – Steering attosecond electron dynamics in biomolecules with UV/XUV light pulses, 1.5 million € (2015-2020). In 2018, she received the Zdenek Herman MOLEC Young Scientist Prize. In addition, she has received the fellowship from the OSA in 2020. 

In her view, this is the right moment in history. A lot of institutions are pushing women to get in the top positions. Her advice to other women wanting to pursue a career in photonics: “Push to get good results! Do a lot of networking.”