Jacopo Bertolotti

News

7 November 2017
There are currently several fully-funded PhD positions open to work in my group, and a few to work on projects I collaborate with (i.e. with me as second supervisor).

• Microscopy in scattering media (in collaboration with Prof. Christian Soeller): link.
• Random walks in inhomogeneous media and their applications in Mesoscopic Physics and Evolutionary Dynamics (in collaboration with Dr Wolfram Moebius): link.
• Acoustic imaging in turbid environments (in collaboration with Prof. J. Roy Sambles): link.
• Modelling and manipulation of material scatter effects to control the propagation of electromagnetic radiation (in collaboration with Dr Simon Horsley): link.

And

• Towards flexible micro-endoscopy: compressive characterisation and control of light propagation through multi-mode optical fibres (first supervisor Dr Dave Phillips): link.
• All dielectric phase-change metamaterial-based holography (first supervisor Prof C. David Wright): link.
• Development of novel electronic and photonic metadevices for adaptive multispectral imaging in the infrared (first supervisor Prof C. David Wright): link.

8 December 2016

On November 29 I was at the IOP gala dinner, where Prof Roy Sambles awarded me the Moseley medal for early career contributions to experimental Physics. Apart from the honor of being awarded the prize, it was a special evening also because Prof. Leggett (Nobel prize laureate in 2003) sent a video message congratulating me for my work. I am not sure I can think of a bigger honor!


22 July 2016
At the beginning of July the IoP awarded me with the Moseley Medal for experimental Physics! This is one of the early career awards (together with the Maxwell medal for theoretical Physics, and the Paterson medal for applied Physics) given by the Institute of Physics each year. Past recipients were people of the calibre of Giuseppe Occhialini, Jeremy Baumberg, and Jeremy O'Brien, so I feel very honored to be in such company! You can find the full citation here.
In November there will be a "gala dinner" where all the prizes (including the prestigious Newton medal) will be officially awarded. I am looking forward to it!

On an unrelated note: I was very recently awarded a Leverhulme Research grant about "Prime factorization using light"), which means that soon I will be able to open a 2-year post-doc position.

16 February 2016
New publication!
The paper is entitled "Quantum correlation of light scattered by disordered media" and study theoretically quantum correlations in light scattered by a disordered medium. The main finding of the paper is that, even when the input light is very "classical" (e.g. thermal), the multiple scattering process is enough for the output modes to develop quantum correlations in the form of quantum discord.
You can find the paper here (and download it freely, as it is published under a CC-BY license), or you can download the pdf direactly from here.

16 October 2015
I am told I am one of the Philip Leverhulme Prize winners (for the Physics category)! The official list of winners is not out yet, as they are waiting to receive acceptance from all the recipients, but it probably will be in a few days. As you can easily guess I am extremely happy about it :-)
Update:
The prize page was not updated yet, but the list of winners can now be found online (or you can download it from here).


12 October 2015
Last week I was in Indonesia as a guest of the Indonesian Institute of Science (Lipi) to give a keynote talk at the ISFAP 2015 conference. I also gave a talk at the Bogor University, where I was hosted by Prof. Husin Alatas, in front of a large group of very enthusiastic students.

28 September 2015
I will give an invited talk at the SPIE Photonics Europe 2016 conference at the Photonic crystal materials and devices (EPE103) symposium, held in Brussels from the 4th to the 7th April 2016.

13 July 2015
New News&Views published! The paper you should probably read is the one from Judkewitz et al. but if you are looking for a layman explanation, my News&Views is here (or you can download directly the pdf from here).

19 May 2015
New publication!
The paper "Characterization of the angular memory effect of scattered light in biological tissues" appeared online a few days ago, and present a detailed characterization of the optical memory effect in systems where scattering is not isotropic (e.g. most biological tissues). Most of the credit goes to San Schott, who did a brilliant job (if you consider that at the time he was an undergraduate you will understand how impressive his work was).
You can find the paper here, or you can download the pdf directly from here.

27 April 2015
New publication!
The paper is entitled "Speckle correlation resolution enhancement of wide-field fluorescence imaging" and report on a novel technique to use a scattering lens for high-resolution imaging with a large field of view. Most of the hard work was done by Hasan Yilmaz (based on an idea from Elbert van Putten).
You can find the paper here, or you can download the pdf directly from here.

22 April 2015
Today I gave an invited talk at the PPNEC 2015 conference at the Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef. A big "thank you" to Dr. Regine Frank for organizing the conference and for the invitation.
The next  appointments will be a seminar at the University of St. Andrews (thanks to Dr. Andrea Di Falco for the invitation) on Tuesday 12 May, and then an invited talk at the ISFAP 2015 conference, that will take place from the 5th to the 7th of October in Bandung (Indonesia). Here the thanks go to Dr. Muhammad Danang Birowosuto.

02 October 2014
New paper published! Well, ok. Not a real paper. It is just a News&Views item on Nature Photonics to give a layman explanation of the very nice work from Katz et al. Still, I am very proud of it, so you can find the original here, or you can download the pdf directly from here.

15 September 2014
A big welcome to Alba Maria Paniagua Diaz and Ilya Starshinov, who just started their PhD and become part of the disordered systems family!

17 July 2014
New paper published!
The paper is entitled "Superpixel-based spatial amplitude and phase modulation using a digital micromirror device", and describes a novel method to achieve complete amplitude and phase modulation. A lot of credit goes to S.A Goorden, who had the original idea and did a large chunk of the work. You can find the paper here, or you can download the pdf directly from here.

09 July 2014
I will give an invited talk at BiOS/Photonics West, 7-2 February in San Francisco (USA) on the subject Non-invasive imaging through opaque scattering layers.

08 May 2014
I gave a seminar at the University of Warwick. A big thanks to Dr. Nicholas d'Ambrumenil for inviting me, and to Prof. Rudolf Roemer and Prof. Matthew Turner for the very nice discussions.

02 May 2014
I gave an invited talk at the PND@10 Workshop organized by Bill Barnes here at Exeter. It was a bit strange to talk about multiple scattering and superdiffusion to an audience mostly specialized in plasmonics. But talking with people with a fresh perspective is always nice.

11 March 2014
I have an opening for a PhD student to work on imaging in turbid media! If you are interested (or you know anyone who might) please look here or download the advert (as a pdf) from here. The deadline for applying is the 18th of April.

21 February 2014
I was awarded a Research Grant from The Royal Society for my project "Imaging in turbid media using a digital micromirror device".

17 January 2014
I will give an invited talk at PIERS 2014, 25-28 August in Guangzhou (China). I will speak in the focus session SC3&2: Disordered Photonics, organized by Dr. P. D. Garcia-Fernández.

27 November 2013
Some long due update to the website. New affiliation, new e-mail address, new postal address.

06 August 2013
Starting next September I will begin a new appointment as a Lecturer (the British way of calling an Assistant Professor) at the University of Exeter. In particular I will be part of the Electromagnetic and Acoustic Materials group in the Physics and Astronomy Department. I will start my own lab, working on light scattering in disordered media and imaging in turbid materials.
This is a new beginning and, as such, it is very exciting and a bit scary. Finger crossed!

I also got an invitation to give an invited talk at the IWH 2013 conference in Japan. The conference location is a bit far away from the usual destinations (the north of Hokkaido is seriously far away from Tokyo), but it will be my first time in the land of the raising sun. I did not organize anything yet, so I do not have a lot of information myself.

10 April 2013
For this spring/summer I am invited at two conferences.
The first one is CLEO Europe 2013, 12-16 May in Munich (Germany). Originally my talk was a submitted one, but they upgraded it to invited. I admit I had no idea this was even possible, but I am definitively not complaining. I will give my talk, entitled Noninvasive Fluorescence Imaging through Strongly Scattering Layers, on Sunday 12 at 16.30 in the session Biophotonics and Applications II (room 13b).
The second one is Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), 23-27 June in Arlington, Virginia (USA). They do not seem to have a program available yet. But I will update this entry as soon as I discover when my talk is supposed to be.

03 April 2013
Abstract submission and registration are open for the Complex Nanophotonics Science Camp! We managed to secure a good amount of fundings, so the registration fee is very low and we have several possible scholarships for everyone who just can not afford it. Join us!

01 March 2013
Change of job! Starting from March I am moving from The Netherlands to France. I will spend a few months at the Institut Langevin (Paris) in the group of Sylvain Gigan.

10 January 2013
Pre-registrations for the Complex Nanophotonics Science Camp are open! The Science Camp aims to bring together a generation of early career scientists (strictly <10 years from Ph.D.) working in this exciting research area, at the boundaries between nanophotonics, biophotonics and complexity science.
We managed to secure an amazing group of invited speakers and a beautiful location. So, join us!

14 December 2012
Thoday Physics World announced its TOP 10 breakthrough for the year 2012. Of course the Breakthrough of the year prize went to the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN for the discovery of the Higgs boson. But our recent work on imaging through opaque materials found its place among the 9 highly commended researches that make the top 10. Side by side with some truly amazing scientific results like the discovery of Majorana fermions, the fact that the time-reversal symmetry is violated, a neutrino-based communication and others.


13 November 2012
Thoday I was invited to present our results on imaging through opaque layers at the MESA+ Colloquium. Every month the MESA+ Institute organize a colloquium where one speaker from within the MESA+ and one speaker from outside are invited to talk about their research. Such occasions are a brilliant opportunity to show what you do to people that might be geographically close to you, but work on very different topics and interact with them. It is also a good moment to see how people from a different field react to what you show them.

09 November 2012
This week I was at the Poincaré Institute in Paris to participate to the MésoImage Workshop. Despite the humble name it was an extremely interesting (albeit small) conference, with a lot of excellent talks. There I presented our work "Non-invasive imaging through opaque scattering layers" just the day after it was published.

08 November 2012
After two years of work the article "Non-invasive imaging through opaque scattering layers" is finally out!
Not only we managed to get it published in Nature, but we also got the cover and a News&Views written by Demetri Psaltis and Ioannis Papadopoulos. I can really say that all the work done paid off really well in the end.
I am extremely proud of this work for many reason but one of them is surely the fact that, in the end, the experimental apparatus is extremely simple. There are many cases where a complex and technologically advance system is required to perform a measurement. But I always found a lot more gratification in those rare occasion where you can exploit your idea with just a limited amount of components on the table.
For a quick overview of the results presented in the paper you can look at our press release or, if you feel braver, you can read the full paper.

23 October 2012
This week I was visiting Prof. Bill Barnes and the Electromagnetic and Acoustic Materials group at the University of Exeter. Beside having a lot of extremely interesting scientific discussion and a very good time, I also gave a seminar entitled "Imaging of a hidden object".

20 August 2012
Today I was visiting Prof. Hui Cao and her group at Yale University. It was an extremely pleasant visit and I had occasion to discuss with many people  and learn a lot. While I was there I also gave a seminar entitled "Non-invasive imaging through opaque scattering layers" at the Applied Physics Department.

18 August 2012
Today I visited Prof. Luca Dal Negro and his group at Boston University. Most of the students were on holidays, but I had a long and interesting discussion with Luca that hopefully was the beginning of a proficuous collaboration.

15 August 2012
Today I gave a talk at the SPIE Optics+Photonics conference in San Diego. It was in a session on the  optical properties of nanostructures and was entitled "Measuring transport channels of disordered materials".

14 August 2012
Today I gave two talks at the SPIE Optics+Photonics conference in San Diego. The first (in the morning) was in a session on unconventional imaging and was entitled "Looking through an opaque screen". The second (in the afternoon) was in a session about scattering from surfeaces and was entitled "Coherent backscattering cone from superdiffusive media".

26 June 2012
I was invited to give a talk at the workshop Light transport and nano-optics in random media organized by Riccardo Sapienza at the King's College (London, UK), where I spoke about "Non-invasive imaging through opaque scattering layers".

04 May 2012
Some time ago I was interviewed by Jon Cartwright, a journalist from Physics World, for a review article about various optical methods to get a very high resolution in microscopy. The article feature work from many different groups (not only COPS) but our results on scattering lenses are described in some details. If you are a IOP member you can see the article on the May issue. Otherwise you can find a pdf copy of it here.

10 Apr 2012
All the three talks I submitted to SPIE Optics+Photonics (San Diego, California, USA, from the 12th to the 16th of August) were accepted! For some miracle they do not even superimpose.
SPIE includes a large number of conferences and a even higher number of sessions. If you want to find me here are the details:

Conference: Unconventional Imaging and Wavefront Sensing VIII
Session: Novel Systems I (Tuesday 14 August)
Title: Looking through an opaque screen
Authors: Jacopo Bertolotti, Univ. Twente (Netherlands) and Univ. Florence (Italy); Elbert van Putten, Univ. Twente (Netherlands); Ad Lagendijk, AMOLF (Netherlands); Willem Vos, Allard Mosk, Univ. Twente (Netherlands)
Abstract: We present a novel method that allow us to image a object hidden behind a strongly scattering layer without any need for an access on the back side. We experimentally validate our technique retrieving a high resolution picture of a fluorescent nanostructure placed behind a strongly scattering diffuser layer.

Conference: Reflection, Scattering, and Diffraction from Surfaces II
Session: Optical Properties: Theory and Measurement (Tuesday 14 August)
Title: Coherent backscattering cone from superdiffusive media
Authors: Jacopo Bertolotti, Univ. Twente (Netherlands) and Univ. Florence (Italy); Matteo Burresi, European Lab. for Non-linear Spectroscopy (Italy); Vivekananthan Radhalakshmi, European Lab. for Non-linear Spectroscopy (Italy) and Univ. Florence (Italy); Romolo Savo, European Lab. for Non-linear Spectroscopy (Italy); Kevin Vynck, European Lab. for Non-linear Spectroscopy (Italy) and Univ. Florence (Italy); Diederik S. Wiersma, European Lab. for Non-linear Spectroscopy (Italy)
Abstract: We perform coherent backscattering cone measurements on strongly inhomogeneous and fractal-like materials (Lévy glasses) that are known to support superdiffusive transport of light. We show how interference effects on transport are influenced by the different step length distribution.

Conference: Nanoengineering: Fabrication, Properties, Optics, and Devices IX
Session: Engineered Nanostructures for Macro Properties (Wednesday 15 August)
Title: Measuring transport channels of disordered materials
Authors: Jacopo Bertolotti, Univ. Twente (Netherlands) and Univ. Florence (Italy); Duygu Akbulut, Sebastianus Goorden, Hasan Yilmaz, Willem Vos, Allard Mosk, Univ. Twente (Netherlands)
Abstract: As light propagates through a disordered material, fields in various incident free space modes are mixed by scattering to generate the transport channels, linear combinations of incident modes that pass through the system. We aim to measure and address individual transport channels in disordered structures. For this purpose, we combine wavefront shaping methods and interferometric detection. Investigating light transport at the single channel level enables in depth study of interference effects and can be used to detect absorption or localization in the system.

15 Mar 2012
Article "Weak Localization of Light in Superdiffusive Random Systems" published in Physical Review Letters. (pdf)
This paper was both selected for a Synopsis on "Physics - spotlighting exceptional research" and tagged as "Editors' Suggestion" by the Americal Physical Society.

13 Mar 2012
The book "Optical Properties of Photonic Structures: Interplay of Order and Disorder" is ready and will be soon available. For more information on the release date refer to the publisher page.
This book deals with the complicate problem of how disorder affects photonic structures and how we can turn disorder from a nuisance to a resource when we fabricate functional optical materials. This is a relatively new field and the literature on this subject is very scattered.
This is not a monograph but more a collection of essays where a lot of the major contributors to the field (with some surprising exception) describe the forefront of the scientific research they have done on the subject.
In this book I co-authored (together with Kevin Vynck, Pierre Barthelemy and Diederik S. Wiersma) the chapter "Superdiffusion of light in Lévy glasses".



04 Oct 2011
A tutorial on Digital Holography is now available on the Tutorials page.

27 Sep 2011
Today I had a talk at the annual MESA+ meeting day. The MESA+ institute includes 28 groups that do research on Nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is a very broad term and thus you can find groups working on Nanophotonics, Biophysics, Fluid physics, Nanoelectronics etc. As a result in a meeting that put all of them together you are bound to encounter a lot of science that is new to you.
The downside is, of course, that you will not understand a large part of it. But the upside is that you can get exposed to a lot of different things making such a meeting a very good occasion to have new ideas. Another very big upside is that, being a local meeting, all those people work relatively close to me and thus it is easy to start collaboration that can actually work out.

19 Sep 2011
The tutorials on random walks and on Lévy flights are now linked also from the COPS website. A new tutorial on Digital Holography is under preparation.

30 Aug 2011
Added a few links to the link page.

25 Aug 2011
First two tutorials included.

25 Aug 2011
This website is on-line!