Award for pioneering work in ultrafast laser science

The American Physical Society (APS) is the world's largest physical society. Since 2014, the APS has been awarding the Carl E. Anderson Division of Laser Science Dissertation Award, which recognizes outstanding doctoral research in the area of Laser Science. This year the award went to Edoardo Baldini, recognizing his PhD work carried out at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne under the supervision of Professors Majed Cherguiand Fabrizio Carbone. This is the first time that the prize is awarded for research performed in a European institution. Baldini received the award at a special ceremony in Washington (DC) last September, during the Frontiers in Optics/Laser Science conference.

Currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyas a postdoctoral researcher in Nuh Gedik’s group, Baldini was awarded other international prizes based on his thesis work: the Chorafas Prize, the Nature Springer Prize, and the 2019 IBM Condensed Matter Physics prize. 

In his thesis “Nonequilibrium Dynamics of Collective Excitations in Quantum Materials”, Baldini used cutting-edge ultrafast spectroscopic tools to explore the dynamical behaviour of so-called “quantum materials”. This term refers to a wide class of solids that hosts exotic