UPC Special Doctoral Awards 2024

The Extraordinary PhD Awards, given annually by the Technical University of Catalonia· Barcelona Tech (UPC), aim to recognize the best doctoral theses which have obtained “cum laude“ in their final PhD defense evaluation. This year, the UPC announced the list of seven awardees in the broad area of “Sciences”, which includes the thesis of four ICFO PhD graduates among the list of extraordinary doctoral works for the academic period 2021/2022.

• Ugaitz Elu Etxano obtained his MSc degree in Photonics from the joint program offered by UPC, UB, UAB and ICFO. He joined the Attoscience and Ultrafast Optics group led by ICREA professor at ICFO Dr Jens Biegert as a master student, and continued in the group to pursue his PhD studies. Dr Etxano’s thesis entitled “High-peak-power mid-infrared OPCPAs for extreme nonlinear photonics” was supervised by Prof. Biegert.
• Dario Lago Rivera obtained his MSc in Photonics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. He joined ICFO as a PhD student in the Quantum Photonics with Solids and Atoms group led by ICREA professor at ICFO Dr. Hugues de Riedmatten. His thesis entitled ‘Remote distribution of quantum states assisted by multimode quantum memories’ was supervised by Prof. de Riedmatten.
• Anna Maria Dawid Lekowska obtained her MSc in Chemistry at the University of Warsaw, Poland. She carried out her PhD studies between Quantum Optics Theory group at ICFO led by ICREA professor at ICFO Dr. Maciej Lewenstein and the University of Warsaw. Her thesis entitled ‘Quantum many-body physics with ultracold atoms and molecules: exact dynamics and machine learning’ was supervised by Prof. Lewenstein and Prof. Dr, Michał Tomza at the University of Warsaw.
• Valeria Venturini obtained her MSc degree in Physics from the Universitá La Sapienza Roma, in Italy. She joined the SLN Facility group led by Dr Stefan Wieser as a PhD student. Dr Venturini’s thesis entitled “Mechanisms and functions of the nucleus as a mechano-controller of cell contractility and migration plasticity” was supervised by Dr Stefan Wieser and Dr Verena Ruprecht.

Congratulations Ugaitz, Dario, Anna and Valeria for this outstanding award!