Biography

Gregor Jotzu is heading the Dynamic Quantum Materials Laboratory (DQML) at EPFL. His research concerns the control of quantum materials using intense low-frequency laser pulses and the dynamics of order formation in strongly correlated quantum systems. 

After reading physics at the University of Oxford, he became the 2009/2010 Michael von Clemm Fellow at Harvard University. He received his doctorate from ETH Zurich, where he studied quantum magnetism and driving-induced order using ultracold atoms in optical lattices in the group of Tilman Esslinger. His work on Haldane’s proposal for a topological insulator using Floquet engineering was recognized with the Prize in General Physics by the Swiss Physical Society and was cited by the Nobel Prize committee.

In 2017 he became researcher in Andrea Cavalleri’s laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, Germany. His work there focused on creating novel states of matter in solids using periodic driving with ultrafast lasers, such as inducing nontrivial topology and high-temperature superconductivity.