I did my PhD in physical chemistry at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPIP, Mainz, Germany). From there I gained hands-on fs laser skills and got familiarized with optic rectification, one of the pioneering THz generation processes back then. Applying this spectroscopy on versatile solid-state nanostructured hybrid materials with a particular interest in a semiconducting 2D metal-organic-framework, I kept pushing the boundary of my knowledge in the field of photo-physics/chemistry for cost-effective solar energy conversion. After my PhD studies I went to Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI, Berlin, Germany) as a postdoc. Three years’ research experience enabled me to expand my expertise from solid-state to liquid-state, from THz to soft x-ray & mid-infrared, from table-top sources to large-facility sources (e.g. synchrotron, FEL). After that, I went to Paul-Scherrer-Institute in Switzerland for strengthening my competence of building ultrafast light sources independently. In this 18-month project, we successfully generated pulsed extremely-narrowband sources in the THz-gap regime via chirped-pulse difference frequency generation based on table-top Ti sapphire lasers. Our sources hold the potential for a coherent control of qubits in Rydberg atoms doped semiconductors. In parallel, my experience with quantum cascade lasers and spectral filtering optic rectification cultivated my enthusiasm of tailoring custom-cut nanostructures for integrated/on-chip light sources.

In the long run, I would like to have my own research group in academia. Therefore, I was looking for a key opportunity of investigating light-matter interaction in quantum technology-oriented systems via tailoring light and/or matter components. Here in the chair of THz high-field spectroscopy at TU Dortmund, I am aiming at leading independent cutting-edge research projects by combining broadband THz sources, multi-dimensional THz spectroscopy and cavity quantumelectrodynamics.