Friday, 09 October, 2020
Welcome!
Prof. Leonardo de Souza Menezes becomes CeNS member
Leonardo de Souza Menezes studied Physics at the Institute of Physics, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil (1995). After his Doctorate on nonlinear spectroscopy of organic molecules with incoherent light (Department of Physics, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco/UFPE, Recife-PE Brazil, 2001) he worked as associate researcher in a project on optical fiber amplifiers based on Raman scattering and multiwavemixing processes, funded by Ericsson (UFPE, 2001-2002). Then, as an Alexander von Humboldt post-doc fellow, he researched on optical microcavities with ultrahigh quality factors (Department of Physics, Humboldt University of Berlin, 2002-2004).
During this time, the research focus was on cavity-enhanced optical processes, micro- and nanolasing and cavity-QED systems. Back to Brazil, in 2005 he got a Professorship at the Physics Department/UFPE where, since then, besides having taught more than 15 different disciplines in the Physics Bachelor, Masters and Doctorate courses, he founded and has been leading two research laboratories dedicated to nanooptics, applying various linear and nonlinear spectroscopic techniques in the study of single nanoparticles, quantum emitters in the presence of critical media, colloids and metasurfaces based on metallic nanoparticles and random lasing. Leonardo spent a sabbatical year at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (Erlangen, 2013-2014), working with Interferometric Scattering aiming at independently measuring the scattering and absorption cross sections of single nanoparticles. In 2020, Leonardo joined the Chair in Hybrid Nanosystems - Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich as a subgroup leader, supervising students doing research on coherent mechanical oscillations of single metallic nanoparticles, the use of rare-earth doped dielectric single nanocrystals for thermometry with spatial resolution on the nanometer scale, new platforms for photonic microcircuits and light emission from quantum emitters. Since 2007, he is a Researcher Level 2 of CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development/Brazil. From 2014 to 2020 Leonardo was Ambassador Scientist of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Brazil.