Chirality in optoelectronics addresses how broken symmetry at the molecular, nanoscale, and mesoscale levels gives rise to fundamentally new optical and electronic functionalities. From Pasteur’s early observations linking crystal handedness to optical rotation, the field has evolved toward modern materials in which chemistry, nanofabrication, and device engineering are deliberately used to encode chirality into semiconductors and photonic structures. The #ChiroOPT symposium will highlight chiral semiconductors and nanomaterials, symmetry-breaking and chirality-transfer strategies, and their implementation in light-emitting and spin-functional devices, while addressing emerging challenges and opportunities in chiral spectroscopy, dynamics, and optoelectronic applications.
- chirality
- light-emitting devices
- nanomaterials
- nanofabrication
- optoelectronics
- emerging semiconductors
- spectroscopy and dynamics
- circular polarization
- spintronics
- optical activity
Dr. Beatriz Martín-García received her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (Cum Laude) from the University of Salamanca (Spain) in 2013. She then joined the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italy) under the Graphene Flagship project, where she worked for nearly six years on modulating the optoelectronic properties of various materials, including nanocrystals, two-dimensional materials, and hybrid metal-halide perovskites, through chemical design and surface functionalization strategies for their integration into solar cells, photodetectors, and memory devices. In 2020, she moved to CIC nanoGUNE BRTA as a research fellow and was awarded the Ikerbasque Research and Ramón y Cajal fellowships. In January 2026, she joined the Materials Physics Center as a CSIC tenured scientist. There, she leads a research line developing and studying tailor-made low-dimensional materials using Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy techniques to select desired optical and magnetic properties for integration into optoelectronic and spintronic devices.
Agustín is experienced in the optical design, fabrication and characterization of large area photonic architectures that can be easily implemented in emerging optoelectronic devices to improve their performance. His group specializes in soft nanoimprinting lithography, which offers an inexpensive and simple pathway to exploit the optical properties of nanophotonic structures with unconventional materials and devices.
Hendrik (Henk) Bolink obtained his PhD in Materials Science at the University of Groningen in 1997 under the supervision of Prof. Hadziioannou. After that he worked at DSM as a materials scientist and project manager in the central research and new business development department, respectively. In 2001 he joined Philips, to lead the materials development activity of Philips´s PolyLED project.
Since 2003 he is at the Instituto de Ciencia Molecular (ICMol )of the University of Valencia where he initiated a research line on molecular opto-eletronic devices. His current research interests encompass: inorganic/organic hybrid materials such as transition metal complexes and perovskites and their integration in LEDs and solar cells.
Mircea CotletMircea Cotlet is a Senior Scientist in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island New York, USA. His research focuses on the interfacial processes in low dimensional nanomaterials and heterostructures and the development and application of ultrafast optical techniques to the study of charge and energy transfer in such nanomaterials.
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.
Giulia is Full Professor at Physical Chemistry Unit at University of Pavia, leading the PVsquared2 team, and running the European Grant ERC Cog Project ELOWDI aiming at the development of advanced hybrid perovskites materials and innovative functional interfaces for efficient, cheap and stable photovoltaics. Within this field, Giulia contributed to reveal the fundamental lightinduced dynamical processes underlying the operation of such advanced optoelectronic devices whose understanding is paramount for a smart device development and for contributing to the transition of a green economy.
Giulia received an MS in Physical Engineering in 2008 and obtained her PhD in Physics cum laude in 2012 at the Politecnico of Milan. Her experimental thesis focused on the realisation of a new femtosecond-microscope for mapping the ultrafast phenomena at organic interfaces. During her PhD, she worked for one year at the Physics Department of Oxford University where she pioneered new concepts within polymer/oxide solar cell technology. From 2012-2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan. In 2015, she joined the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with a Co-Funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. From 2016 to 2019, she has been awarded by the Swiss Ambizione Energy Grant providing a platform to lead her independent research group at EPFL focused on the developemnt of new generation hybrid perovskite solar cells.
She is author of 160 peer-reviewed scientific papers focused on developement and understanding of the interface physics which governs the operation of new generation solar cells.
Recently, she received the USERN prize in Physical Science, the Swiss Physical Society Award in 2018 for Young Researcher and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics. She is currently USERN Ambassador for Italy and board member of the Young Academy of Europe.
More can be found at https://pvsquared2.unipv.it.
Shuxia Tao is a compuational materials scientist and she studies how photons, electrons and ions interact with each other and how such interactions determine the formation, function and degradation of materials. Currently, she leads the Computational Materials Physics group at the department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Tao's group focuses on multiscale modelling of energy and optoelectronic materials, studying the growth of nanomaterials and developing theory of light-matter interactions. The ultimate goal is perfecting the quality of these materials and maximizing their efficiency for converting and storing energy and information. Her recent contribution to PV materials focuses on halide perovskites, where she made important contribution in the understanding of the electronic structure, the defect chemistry/physics and the nucleation and growth of halide perovskites. Recently, she also expanded the research to the interactions of perovskites with other contact materials in devices and novel optoelectronic properties, such as optical chirality and chiral induced spin selevetivity.
Li Wan