President, Deputy President and University director's visit at SCI 2022
Sigbritt Karlsson, Mikael Östling and Kerstin Jacobsson, who are the President, Deputy President and University director of KTH, respectively, visited our School this month. Together with several members of the faculty, they had a tour in the AlbaNova building and a visit at 3 labs of KTH that belong to the same premises.
Their visit started from a maker space at AlbaNova where Pär Olsson, the head of the Department of Physics that operates at AlbaNova, had a surprise for them. A 3D-reproduction of AlbaNova that was also filled with some delicious home-made pralines.
After having some pralines, the group proceeded to the lab visits.
Their first stop was at the Functional and nanoMaterials lab. The students presented research projects that they work on together with the head of the group, Prof. Joydeep Dutta. The projects encompassing the application of functional materials in the energy-environment nexus include “Membrane free Green Hydrogen electrolyzers”, “Hydrogen from Cellulose” “Green Coatings for Anti-microbial and Food Preservation”, “Sunlight driven microplastics removal from water” and “Capacitive Deionization”. The last project has already been commercialized through Stockholm water Technology AB. Inspiring discussions about the research, equipment’s, and the recent technological advances in the lab encompassing the concept in the group for developing engineering solutions for sustainable living and the circular economy was the hallmark of this visit.
The second lab to visit was the BALTAZAR lab – the lab name is actually an acronym but with a wink to the cartoon professor. The lab that used to be located in Kista but was substantially upgraded at the same time as it was transferred to the Nova building of AlbaNova in the spring of 2020 when the two Applied physics divisions located in Kista moved to the Albano campus. Oscar Tjernberg, the professor of materials physics that has lead the lab since its conception, talked about their current research.
The BALTAZAR laboratory provides short pulse extreme vacuum ultraviolet (XUV) radiation and tunable short pulse infrared radiation that is used for pump and probe spectroscopy on the femtosecond time scale. In particular, the pulsed radiation is used for time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy on quantum matter. Topics of current interest are: The origin and time dynamics of the Cooper pair formation in high temperature superconductors, dynamically driven topological exciton condensates and the creation of transient topological Weyl semi-metal states.
Lastly, the leadership group visited professor David Haviland’s lab where superconducting quantum technology is studied. Professor Haviland described measurements on qubit circuits made at Chalmers, and experiments with quantum limited force sensors for Atomic Force Microscopy, made at KTH in the AlbaNova Nanolab. Haviland's group specializes in superconducting quantum circuits and fully digital microwave measurement methods for controlling and reading out quantum circuits.
In the picture, David Haviland is leaning on the frame of a dilution refrigerator cryostat, used to cool superconducting quantum circuits to 10 mK. Mikael Östling is standing in front of a specialized digital microwave measurement platform use to control and readout quantum circuits. The platform was developed at KTH within the WACQT program and it is used by WACQT researchers at Chalmers, and by others around the world. It is presently sold by a KTH quantum technology spin off company called Intermodulation Products AB .
At the end of the visit, we asked the President Sigbritt Karlsson and the Deputy President Mikael Östling what they take with them: “We keep the enormous engagement in Science and the people’s enthusiasm as well as the good organization and facilities in the labs.”
Text: Danai Deligeorgaki