Profile
Igor Aharonovich
- Chief Investigator
- University of Technology Sydney
- @igordownunder
Igor Aharonovich received his B.Sc (2005) and M.Sc (2007) in Materials Eng from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof Yeshayahu Lifshitz. He then moved to Australia and pursued his PhD studies at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Prof Steven Prawer. During his PhD, Igor developed experimental techniques to engineer novel, ultra bright single photon emitters in diamond.
In 2011, Igor took a postdoctoral position at Harvard University at the group of Prof Evelyn Hu. His research was focused on nanofabrication of optical cavities out of diamond, SiC and GaN. He also carried out nanophotonic experiments including coupling of emitters to optical cavities, turning of cavity resonances and low temperature high resolution spectroscopy.
In 2013 Igor has joined the University of Technology Sydney, where he leads the quantum nanophotonics laboratory. His research is focused on exploring single defects in wide bandgap semiconductors for quantum technologies. Specifically, his team was the first to discover single emitters in hexagonal boron nitride and the first to isolate spin defects in this material. In 2018, together with Carlo Bradac, Igor co-founded http://www.writeitupnow.com – a scientific writing company that assists scientists in communicating their scientific results.
Igor received several international awards including the CN Yang Award – honors young researchers with prominent research achievements in physics in the Asia Pacific region (2019), the Pawsey medal from the Australian Academy of Science (2017), David Syme Research Prize (For the best original research in biology, physics, chemistry or geology, produced in Australia during the preceding two years (2017), the IEEE Photonics Young Investigator Award (2016)