Elisabeth Giacobino

ELISABETH GIACOBINO is a CNRS Research Director at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, which is a joint research institute of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Université Pierre and Marie Curie and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). She studied physics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and received her PhD in Atomic Physics and Optics from the Université Paris VI. She has been an invited Professor at New York University and at the University of Auckland (New-zealand).

Her research interests were first concerned with laser spectroscopy, in particular Doppler-free two photon spectroscopy. Then she started a new research subject focused on quantum optics, and she demonstrated in 1987, for the first time, two-beam squeezing generated by a parametric oscillator, a result that has triggered numerous results since then.

In 1995, using a cloud of laser-cooled atoms, she proposed a new method to generate squeezed light and entangled beams of light (2003). Recently, after demonstrating the capability of vapours to store quantum states of light, she is developing a quantum memory register based on a cold atom cloud. The development of quantum memory registers and quantum repeaters represents a major challenge for the field of quantum information science and technology.

Another line of research concerns semiconductor systems, which are of critical importance in information technology. She has studied intensity quantum noise in semiconductor lasers and explained how to reduce it. In passive semiconductor microcavities, she has demonstrated for the first time the emission of squeezed light and correlated beams. Very recently, with her team, she has studied the properties of exciton-polaritons as a quantum fluid and demonstrated superfluidity in such systems.

She has been the coordinator of 4 European projects and a partner in 5 of them in several European Programmes in the Information Technology Directorate. She is a member of Academia Leopoldina and a fellow of the EPS and of the EOS.

Elisabeth Giacobino has held several positions in the management of research in France, in particular at the national level at CNRS and at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. From 1995 to 1999, she was Deputy Director of the Mathematics and Physics Department of CNRS, from 2001 to 2002 she was Director of the Mathematics and Physics Department of CNRS, from 2002 to 2006, she was General Director for Research at the Ministry for Higher Education and Research. From 2006 to 2010, she was in charge of the Interdisciplinary Programs at CNRS. Since 2010, she is the Chair of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF, junior section).

At the European level she has been for many years an expert for the European Commission in various programs. Since 2007 she is a member of the Information Society Technology Advisory Group (ISTAG) for the European Commission. Since 2008 she is a chaiperson of the ERC panel for Physics PE2-B (advanced).