GROUP LEADER

JAIME GOMEZ RIVAS

e-mail:  j.gomez.rivas at tue.nl

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FQZGvQoAAAAJ&hl=en

I received my PhD in 2002 from the University of Amsterdam for his work on light transport in disordered media. From 2002 until 2005, I worked as postdoctoral researcher at the RWTH technical University in Aachen (Germany) on THz spectroscopy, pioneering the field of semiconductor THz plasmonics. In 2005, I became project leader at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF), leading the group Surface Photonics. This group was partially located at Philips Research in Eindhoven, in order to bring blue sky research into applications. The group introduced the concept of plasmonics and nanoantennas for solid state lighting. In 2010, I became part-time professor at TU/e and group leader at AMOLF. After 10 years of fruitful collaboration with Philips, the group moved in 2015 to the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) and in 2018 it moved completely to TU/e, where I am full professor. I have received several prestigious grants and awards, such as ERC starting and Proof of Concept grants, NWO-VICI, 3 FOM-IPPs and a Facebook Academy Award. I have been also panel member of important funding agencies, such as ERC and NWO. I also work as Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Physics, a leading journal of the American Institute of Physics.

 

 

RESEARCHERS and RESEARCH SUPPORT

MATTHIJS BERGHUIS

e-mail: A.M.Berghuis AT tue.nl

In May 2017 I joined the group Surface Photonics. The project I am working on focuses on exciton-polariton transport in organic semiconductors. Before coming to Eindhoven I studied applied physics at the University of Groningen, where I did my master graduation project in the Photophysics and Opto-Electronics group about water splitting by organic-inorganic hybrid photocathodes. During my master I did an internship at Polyera Corporation in Chicago about the influence of molecular conjugation length on charge transport in organic electronics. In my free time I like to play the bass.

 

DUNCAN DECOZ

e-mail: d.d.decoz AT tue.nl

 

POSTDOCS

JIE JI

e-mail: j.jie AT tue.nl

Jie obtained her PhD degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2019. During the PhD, she focused on THz light interaction with ferroelectric thin films, as well as artificial metamaterials for applications in THz tunable devices. Jie joined Prof. Peter Bøggild’s group in Technical University of Denmark as postdoctor. She extended her research into THz study of 2D materials,  exploring ultrafast carrier dynamics,  plasmonics, and nonlinear THz response of 2D materials and Nano-/Micro-structured 2D metasurfaces. Starting from May 2023, Jie extended her research on THz metasurfaces in the Surface Photonics Group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

 

ANNE VAN KLINKEN

e-mail: a.v.klinken AT tue.nl

Anne joined the Surface photonics group in October 2025 as a postdoc. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Physics at Humboldt University Berlin in 2016 and moved to the Netherlands in 2017. At Eindhoven University of Technology, she continued her studies with a Master program in Applied Physics with the specialization Nanoscience & Technology, including a 3-month internship at ASML in Veldhoven, NL. In the Photonics and Semiconductor Nanophysics group, Anne worked on photonic-crystal fiber-tip sensors during her graduation project supervised by prof. Andrea Fiore and graduated in 2019. Afterwards, she joined the same group as a PhD student working on integrated spectral sensors for material analysis applications and for the optical readout of optical sensors. She defended her PhD thesis in 2025 and joined the group of prof. Jaime Gomez Rivas in the same year. In collaboration with TeraNova B.V., she is currently working on the metrology of optical metasurfaces by scatterometry while employing the polarization properties of light. Anne lives in Eindhoven together with her family.

 

PHD STUDENTS

FRANCESCA CUSSIOL

e-mail: f.cussiol AT tue.nl

 

MASOUMEH GOUDARZI

e-mail: m.goudarzi AT tue.nl

 

BRAM HEIJNEN

e-mail: b.j.heijnen AT tue.nl

I joined the surface photonics group in November 2023 as a PhD student, after I obtained both my bachelor’s and master’s degree applied physics at the Eindhoven University of Technology. For my bachelor thesis, I already joined the surface photonics group studying the carrier dynamics in semiconductors using THz time-domain spectroscopy. After I finished my bachelor’s degree, I continued specializing myself in the field of photonics. For my master’s thesis, I worked on the multispectral readout of guided-mode resonance biosensors. Furthermore, during my master’s degree, I also did an internship at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh studying the nonlinear Kerr index of transparent conductive oxides. For my current research, I use THz time-domain spectroscopy to study the carrier dynamics in (photo-)electrochemical cells. This project is in close collaboration with the plasma & materials processing group at the TU/e and the TU München.

 

SAMUEL JOHN

e-mail: s.john AT tue.nl

 

LUCAS NORG

e-mail: l.r.l.norg AT tue.nl

I joined the group Surface Photonics as a PhD candidate in October 2025. I had obtained my master’s degree Applied Physics at the TU/e in the same year. This degree included a thesis project in which I worked in the Molecular Materials and Nanosystems group to study the exction binding energies of Ir-emitter OLED materials chiefly using Field-Induced Dissociation experiments in conjunction with Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. To complete my master’s degree, I did an internship in the Molecular Photophysics group at the University of Sydney (Australia) where I experimentally researched the angle-dependent photoemission lifetimes of polaritonic systems consisting of organic emitters in Fabry-Pérot microcavities. My current research at the Surface Photonics group is about design and nanoscopy of metasurfaces for fluorescence enhancement. Due to the potential of such metasurfaces for use in biosensing, I collaborate with the Molecular Plasmonics group.

 

DJERO PEETERS

e-mail: d.b.l.peeters AT tue.nl

 

JOOST SCHEERS

e-mail: j.m.scheers AT tue.nl

 

CAS SCHEPER

e-mail: c.j.c.scheper AT tue.nl

I joined the group in October 2025 as a PhD student. My current research, as part of the TERATOM project, focuses on next-generation terahertz metrology for semiconductor heterostructures, aiming to achieve non-destructive, depth-resolved characterization of complex multilayer systems.  Previously, as part of my graduation project for the master’s degree in Applied Physics at the Eindhoven University of Technology, I investigated a photonics–spintronics hybrid architecture, demonstrating fs-pulse-driven all-optical switching of magnetic tunnel junctions and exploring its integration with passive photonic components.

 

EVERT SIMONS

e-mail: e.m.e.simons AT tue.nl

I joined the group Surface Photonics as a Ph.D. student in November 2023. I received my bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Utrecht University after which I continued a master’s degree in Nanomaterials Science at Utrecht University with an interest in colloidal soft matter physics. My current research mainly focuses on the multi-scale investigation of structural color in printing inks in the Soft Matter and Biological Physics group (TU/e) in close collaboration with Canon Production Printing (Venlo) and Soft-Organizing Soft Matter (TU/e).

 

KEHAN WANG

e-mail: k.wang3 AT tue.nl

 

MASTER STUDENTS

HEIDER AL-SHARIF

SAMUEL CILLEN

JAKUB GRECNER

AMIR MOUSAWI

DENNIS TEIRLINCK

 

VISITING SCIENTISTS

MAIRA PEREZ SOSA

XIAODONG ZHANG

 

TERANOVA B.V.

TeraNova b.v is a start-up company founded in 2019 by the Surface Photonics group. TeraNova b.v. develops and commercializes metrology instruments for the purposes of scatterometry and semiconductor characterization using optical and terahertz radiation. These instruments provide critical information about the quality of the wafers fabricated for photonics and quantum applications. Although TeraNova b.v. operates independently from the group, we host some of the activities. Also, TeraNova b.v. is formed by former group members.

 

MOHAMMAD RAMEZANI

Phone: +31 40-247 5639

e-mail: m.ramezani AT teranova.nl

Prior to joining the group Surface Photonics as a PhD student, I received my bachelor degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran (Iran). I continued my studies in master degree at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) in Materials Science and Engineering, with the orientation of semiconductor and optoelectronics materials. I did six-month internship at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) at the department of Photonics Materials and Devices, where I worked on plasmonic metasurfaces for solid-state lighting in the group Surface Photonics. My graduation thesis was awarded as the best of my promotion on Materials Science and Engineering at EPFL. On April 2019, I obtained the PhD degree with the thesis “Coherent Light-Matter Interaction in Arrays of Plasmonic Structures”.  My PhD research involved studying strong light-matter interaction in proximity of resonant metallic nanostructures and investigating the nonlinear behavior of such systems at room temperature. In 2019, I co-funded TeraNova b.v. where I work full time since 2022 as CEO.

 

GABI CASTELLANOS GONZALEZ

I joined the Surface Photonics group in November 2017 after doing an internship at DIFFER where I discovered about the research done by the Surface Photonics group. Prior to that I received my bachelor degree in Physics at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and my master at the University of Utrecht. My PhD research focused on the coupling (weak and strong) of excitons in organic materials and arrays of nanoparticles. I graduated in 2022, joining TeraNova b.v. as development engineer.

 

DUNCAN DECOZ

 

MAIRA PEREZ SOUSA

 

ALUMNI

Former PhD students:

• Francesco Verdelli, postdoc at UC San Diego, USA
• Mohamed Abdelkhalik, optical engineer at ASML, Amsterdam
• Stan ter Huurne, Business Controller bij Collin Crowdfund
• Gabriel Castellanos Gonzalez, research engineer at TeraNova b.v.
• Ping Bai, postdoc at Westlake University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
• Matthijs Berghuis, research assistant at Surface Photonics.
• Niels van Hoof, working at ASML (Veldhoven, The Netherlands)
• Mohammed Ramezani, CEO of TeraNova B.V.
• Arkabrata Bhattarchya, working at ASML (Veldhoven, The Netherlands)
• Dick van Dam, Researcher in climate and energy policy and project leader at PBL (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• Giorgios Georgiou, Lecturer in Microarchitectures for Quantum Engineering (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
• Martijn Schaafsma, working at ASML (Veldhoven, The Netherlands)
• Giuseppe Pirruccio, scientist at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico City, Mexico)
• Said Rodriguez, group leader at AMOLF (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
• Grzegorz Grzela, working at ASML (Veldhoven, The Netherlands)
• Yingqian Zhang, working at ASML (Veldhoven, The Netherlands)
• Silke Diedenhofen, Project Officer NWO (The Hague, The Netherlands)

Former Postdocs (since 2018):

• Yu-Chen (Wilson) Wei (Assistant professor, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)
• Minpeng Liang (Assistant researcher, Zhangjiang National Laboratory, Shanghai, China)
• Simrjit Singh 
• Aleks Vaskin (Researcher at Sony, Germany)
• Shaojun Wang (Elite Associate Professor, School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou, China)
• Quynh Le Van (Principal investigator at Vin University, Hanoi, Vietnam)
• Alexei Halpin (Researcher at Council of Canadian Acedemies, Canada)