Halide perovskite semiconductors have emerged as a versatile materials platform for next-generation optoelectronic, spintronic, and quantum technologies. Their remarkable defect tolerance, tunable electronic and spin structures, and ionic–covalent bonding lead to properties fundamentally distinct from those of conventional semiconductors such as silicon or III–V compounds. This symposium will explore the fundamental mechanisms that govern charge, exciton, and spin dynamics in halide perovskites and how these processes are influenced by dimensionality, composition, and structural dynamics. By combining experimental and theoretical perspectives, PeroFun aims to identify unifying principles and emerging functionalities in perovskite materials — from bulk to quantum-confined systems — with a view toward scalable, energy-efficient, and quantum-engineered devices. Expected outcome: The symposium will foster interdisciplinary connections between synthesis, ultrafast spectroscopy, and theoretical modeling communities to guide the next generation of perovskite-based optoelectronic and quantum materials.
- Synthesis of novel halide perovskites - from colloidal nanocrystals to bulk materials (0D, 1D, 2D, 3D)
- Lead-free halide perovskites and perovskite-inspired materials
- Static and dynamic structural properties
- Photophysics, exciton, and carrier dynamics
- Chirality, spin, and magneto-optical effects
- Polaritons and strong light–matter coupling
- Quantum-engineered functionalities and quantum-light sources
Sascha is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Physical Chemistry and Head of the Laboratory for Energy Materials at EPFL (Switzerland), while he is also maintaining strong ties with the Harvard community and in particular Winthrop House which he regularly visits as NRT and SCR member.
His team employs light-matter interactions to understand the next generation of soft semiconductors with the overarching goal of maximizing energy efficiency for a sustainable future by unlocking applications ranging from flexible light-weight solar cells & displays all the way to entirely new applications in quantum information processing.
Previously, he was a research group leader and Rowland Fellow at Harvard University. Before starting his lab at Harvard, Sascha studied Chemistry at Heidelberg University (Germany) and completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge (UK), where he subsequently worked as EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow.
Paulina Plochocka, Directrice de recherché de 2e classe (DR2) in Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses (LNCMI), CNRS in Toulouse.
P. Plochocka obtained her PhD cum-laude in 2004 at the University of Warsaw working on the dynamics of many-body interactions between carriers in doped semi-magnetic quantum wells (QW). During her first post doc at Weizmann Institute of science, she started working on the electronic properties of a high mobility 2D electron gas in the fractional and integer quantum Hall Effect regime. She continued this topic during second post doc in LNCMI Grenoble, where she was holding individual Marie Curie scholarship. At the same time, she enlarged her interest of 2D materials towards graphene and other layered materials as TMDCs or black phosphorus. In 2012 she obtained permanent position in LNCMI Toulouse, where she created the Quantum Electronics group, which investigates the electronic and optical properties of emerging materials under extreme conditions of high magnetic field and low temperatures. Examples include semiconducting layer materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides, GaAs/AlAs core shell nanowires and organic inorganic hybrid perovskites.
Alexander S. Urban studied Physics at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) obtaining an equivalent to an M.Sc. degree (German: Dipl. Phys.) at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) in 2006. During his studies he spent a year at Heriot Watt University (UK), where he obtained an M.Phys. in Optoelectronics and Lasers in 2005. He then joined the Photonics and Optoelectronics Chair of Jochen Feldmann at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich (Germany) in 2007 where he worked on the optothermal manipulation of plasmonic nanoparticles, earning his Ph.D. summa cum laude in 2010. He expanded his expertise in the fields of plasmonics and nanophotonics in the group of Naomi J. Halas at the Laboratory for Nanophotonics at Rice University (Houston, TX, USA), beginning in 2011. He returned to the LMU in 2014 to become a junior group leader with Jochen Feldmann, where he led the research thrusts on optical spectroscopy, focusing on hybrid nanomaterials such as halide perovskite nanocrystals and carbon dots. In 2017 he was awarded a prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council and shortly after that in 2018 he received a call as a Full Professor of Physics (W2) at the LMU. Here, he now leads his own research group working on nanospectroscopy in novel hybrid nanomaterials.