Team

PI: Prof. Stefan Wabnitz

S. Wabnitz obtained the Laurea Degree in Electronics Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome in 1982, the MS in Electrical Engineering from Caltech in 1983, and the PhD in Applied Electromagnetism from the Italian Ministry of Education in 1988. He was with the Ugo Bordoni Foundation between 1985 and 1996. In 1996 he became full professor in Physics at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France. Between 1999 and 2003 he was with Alcatel Research and Innovation Labs in France and with Xtera Communications in Texas. Since 2007 until 2018 he was full professor at the University of Brescia, Italy. Since November 2018 he is full professor in telecom at the Department of Information, Electronics and Telecom Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome. His research activities involve nonlinear propagation effects in optical communications and information processing devices. He is the author and co-author of over 700 international refereed papers, conference presentations, and book chapters. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Optical Fiber Technology, a Fellow member of the Optical Society of America, and senior member of IEEE-Photonics Society.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=KE7tIU8AAAAJ&hl=it


Research Engineer: Dr. Rocco Crescenzi

Rocco Crescenzi received the degree in Aerospace Engineering at the ”Sapienza” University of Rome in 2002 and successively the Doctorate degree in Industrial Production Engineering. He works as mechanical engineer at the Nanostructure Laboratory in the Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunication at ”Sapienza” University of Rome. He is employed in the Electronic Technological Laboratory as expert in plasma process (RIE, Sputtering and PECVD), thermal vapor deposition, photolithographic process, wet etching and electrochemical processes. His researches focus on the MEMS and his research group has developed several experimental setups for the mechanical characterization of the micro and nanostructured materials. His designing interests regard the finite element modeling, in particular the modeling of micro-electromechanical-system (MEMS). He supports the MEMS course at the same University since 2004.


Research Associate: Dr. Fabio Mangini

Fabio Mangini received Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Engineering in 2005 and the Master degree in Biomedical Engineer “cum laude” from “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy in 2008. He received the Ph.D. in Electromagnetism from the Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications, in the same University in 2014. In June 2014 and in May 2015 he won the prize “Young Scientist Award” for URSI (International Union of Radio Science), in January 2017 he won the “PhD ITalents” prize, and in October 2018 won the “Marabelli prize”. From 2009 till 2015 he worked with the Laboratory of Electromagnetic Fields II of “La Sapienza University of Rome”. His research activity has concerned guiding structures, numerical methods, theoretical scattering models, optical propagation, anisotropic media, and metamaterials, biomedical applications, cultural-heritage applications. Since April 2019 he is a researcher working in the Electromagnetic Fields and Photonics group at the University of Brescia.


Postdoc: Dr. Mario Ferraro

Mario Ferraro received the Bachelor’s degree in Physics “cum laude and special mention to the curriculum” in 2013 from University of Calabria (Italy) and the Master degree in Physics “cum laude” in 2015 from “La Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy). He has been awarded as excellent graduated student of “La Sapienza” University of Rome in 2016 and he received the Ph.D. in Physics in 2019 from the University of Côte d’Azur in Nice (France). His research activity has concerned nonlinear optics in nanodisordered media as well as semiconductor-based hyperbolic metameterials. Since January 2020 he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Engineering department of “La Sapienza” University of Rome working on ultrafast nonlinear phenomena in multimode optical fibers.


Research Associate: Dr. Mario Zitelli

M. Zitelli obtained the Laurea Degree in Electronics Engineering and the PhD in Applied Electromagnetism from Sapienza University of Rome in 1995 and 1999 respectively. From 1997 to 1999 he was with Ugo Bordoni Foundation (FUB); since 1999 he has worked as a senior researcher and R&D manager in several telecom companies: Pirelli Submarine Telecom Systems (Milan, Italy), QPlus Networks Inc. (Long Beach, CA), Santel Networks Inc. (Fremont, CA), CNET France-Telecom (Lannion, France), TelCon (Rome, Italy), OCEM Airfield Technology (Valsamoggia, Italy), Leonardo (Pomezia, Rome), Selex System Integrations (Overland Park, Kansas, USA), Argos Ingegneria (Rome, Italy), Photoneco ltd (London, UK). His research activities include nonlinear fiber transmission, spatial nonlinear effects, advanced optical modulation formats, photometry. He is author/co-author of over 30 international refereed papers and conference presentations, 5 international patents, and was member/co-director of 5 research projects from EU, NATO, FILAS.


Postdoc: Dr. Yi Fan Sun

Yifan Sun received his Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Information Science and Technology in 2013 from Xidian University (Xi’an, China) and his Master degree in radio physics in 2016 from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chengdu, China). He defended his Ph.D. thesis, entitled “Theory of mode-locked lasers based on non-conventional cavity modes” from the LUMIN Laboratory, Université Paris-Saclay (Orsay, France) in January 2021. Since June 2021 he is a postdoctoral fellow working on ultrafast nonlinear phenomena in multimode optical fibers at the Nonlinear Photonics Lab of Sapienza University of Rome.


Postdoc: Dr. Pedro Parra-Rivas

In 2010, Pedro received his degree in Physics (Licenciatura en Fisica) at the Universidad de Granada.  In 2011 he received a Master degree in mathematics at the Universidad de Salamanca, where he specialized in advanced mathematical methods in physics, in particular in differential geometry. That same year he joined the IFISC institute at Palma de Mallorca, where he started his current research about nonlinear dynamics of localized structures in dissipative systems. In 2013 he got a FWO scholarship and in 2017 he completed a joint PhD in Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and in Physics at the Universidat des Illes Balears. From October to December 2014 he worked with Prof. Edgar Knobloch at UC Berkeley, USA. 

In October 2017 he started a postdoc position at the KUL in the group of Dynamics of biological systems led by Prof. Lendert Gelens. The same year he got a FNRS postdoctoral position as chargé de recherche and joined OPERA-photonique at the ULB in October 2018 where he collaborated with François Leo. During this period hi research focused on the study of the dynamics of dissipative structures in the context of quadratic dispersive optical cavities.

In 2021, he was awarded with a Marie Curie fellowship from the ERC and he moved to Rome to work with Prof. Stefan Wabnitz at La Sapienza University of Rome. His current research focuses on the study of spatio-temporal light bullets in multimode fibers. The same year he was also awarded with a Juan de la Cierva fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology.

In his free time, he loves traveling around the world and enjoying life as much as he can.




Former collaborators

Research Associate: Dr. Francesco Rinaldo Talenti

Francesco Rinaldo Talenti obtained his master degree from the flemish university of Brussels, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), graduating in Physics and Astronomy in July 2019. In the same academic year, he performed an internship at the INO Institute of Pozzuoli, close to Naples, where he studied the locking technique and the thermal effects of an optical cavity for frequency comb. Francesco carried out his thesis at the B-phot team of the applied physics and photonics group, at the faculty of engineering of the VUB. Here he studied the spectral broadening of a chirped pulse propagating through nonlinear waveguides, considering also the case of a graphene top layer. From November 2019 he joined the european funded project MOOCA (Multiscale optical frequency comb and applications) for an Industrial Ph.D.

Postdoc: Dr. Raphaël Jauberteau

Raphaël Jauberteau was born on February the 5th, 1994, in Limoges, France. He received a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree, both from Limoges University, in High Technology engineering: Hautes Technologies, Electronique et Photonique. In 2021, he defended his PhD thesis on Nonlinear Optics, in cotutelle between the University of Limoges and the University of Brescia (Italy) on Nonlinear Optics.
He is now working as a postdoctoral fellow on nonlinear microscopy, at the Nonlinear Photonics Lab of Sapienza University of Rome.In his free time, he enjoys making music, reading and travelling. Going out for a drink is a good option too.

Postdoc: Dr. Alioune Niang

Alioune Niang received his B.S in physics at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal in 2008, the M.Sc. in Photonics Signals and Imaging in 2009 and the PhD in Physics and photonics in 2014 from the University of Angers (France). Following his PhD, he has been a temporary teaching and research associate (ATER) at the University of Angers in the Laboratory of Photonics in Angers. From April 2018 to March 2021, he has worked as a postdoc researcher in the Electromagnetic Fields and Photonics group at the University of Brescia in Italy. Since Jun 2021, he is a postdoctoral fellow working at the Engineering department of La Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). His research lies on the field of ultra-short fiber lasers using passive saturable absorbers (nonlinear polarization rotation, nonlinear fiber loop mirrors, graphene, topological insulators), optical soliton generation, nonlinear spatial beam reshaping in optical multimode fibers, supercontinuum generation, and multimode fiber lasers. He is a co-author of over 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.


MCSA Fellow: Dr. Vladimir Kalashnikov

Vladimir Kalashnikov was born in Minsk, Belarus, in 1965. He received an M.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics in 1989 and a Ph.D. degree in laser physics in 1992 from Belorussian State University, Minsk, for theoretical work on mode-locked solid-state lasers. He was with the Institute for Applied Physics Problems (Minsk) from 1989 to 1993 as a Junior and then Senior Researcher. During 1993–-1996, he held a Scientific Secretary position at the International Laser Center, Belorussian Polytechnic Academy. In 1996, he was a Visiting Scientist at the Institute for Laser- and Plasmophysics, University of Essen, Germany. From 1996, he was a Head of the Laser Optics Laboratory, International Laser Center, Belarus, and an Associate Professor at the Instrument-Industry Department, Belorussian Polytechnic Academy. In 2001, he joined the Photonics Institute, Technical University of Vienna, Austria, as a Lise Meitner Fellow, where he stayed till 2019 with the two years interruption as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Aston University (Birmingham, UK) as well as the short-term fellowships at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics (Garching, Germany), the Novosibirsk University (Russia), and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. At this moment, he is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests include ultrafast nonlinear optics, laser physics, high-speed telecommunication, and theory of dissipative solitons. He is the author and co-author of more than 350 publications.