LEOS Scottish Chapter 2007-2008 news

Maria Ana Cataluna has been awarded a prestigious LEOS graduate student fellowship as a result of her work in ultrafast laser physics.

Maria received the Physics Engineering degree from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal, in 2001. She has been committed to research in ultra-fast laser physics since her time as an undergraduate and worked as a research assistant from 2000 to 2003 in the Group of Lasers and Plasmas at IST. In 2003, she obtained a scholarship from the Portuguese Government (Foundation for Science and Technology) that enabled her to pursue her Ph.D. studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. In December 2007, she concluded her Ph.D. in Physics, where her research work focused on the ultrashort-pulse generation from quantum-dot semiconductor diode lasers. Maria Ana has authored and co-authored over 30 peer reviewed journal publications and conference presentations, including a review paper in Nature Photonics and an invited contribution to the Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (second edition), on the subject of ultrafast lasers based on quantum dot materials. Maria Ana is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Dundee, Scotland, where she is engaged in the investigation of innovative mode-locking regimes in quantum-dot lasers and also in the generation of mid-IR radiation using novel quasi phase-matched semiconductor crystals.