Albert Polman is a scientific group
leader and director of the FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular
Physics, a research laboratory of the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental
Research on Matter, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is associated with
the University of Utrecht as a professor of nanophotonics and is
part-time visiting associate in the Faculty of Applied Physics at the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. Polman was elected
member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW) in 2009.
Polman is one of the pioneers of the research field of nanophotonics:
the control, understanding, and application of light at the nanoscale. Polman's research group specializes in fundamental studies at the
interface between optical physics and materials science, and has
regularly demonstrated transfer of knowledge to applied concepts.
Polman received his master's degree in physics (1985) and his Ph.D.
degree in materials science and engineering (1989) from the University
of Utrecht. From 1989 to 1991 he was a post-doctoral staff researcher at
AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, NJ). Since 1991 he has been
associated with AMOLF, first as a group leader, since 1999 also as a
department head. In 2005 he initiated the Center for Nanophotonics at
AMOLF; in 2006 he was appointed as director of AMOLF. Polman was one of
the initiators of the Amsterdam nanoCenter, a regional facility for
nanofabrication founded in 2003. From March 2003 - February 2004 he was
on sabbatical leave at CALTECH, where he was a research associate in the
group of Prof. H.A. Atwater.
Polman's main research interest is to control light at the nanoscale.
His group studies the propagation, dispersion and confinement of light
in metallic nanostructures using surface plasmons. Furthermore, his
group studies optical metamaterials: artificially made materials with
engineered permittivity and permeability, that posses a negative index
of refraction. Most recently, Polman has focussed part of his research
to applying nanophotonic
insights to improve the efficiency of thin-film solar cells.
Polman's group has published 200
articles in international journals, 80 conference proceedings, holds
four patents. He has given over 80 invited talks at international
conferences, several of them as plenary or keynote speaker. Polman's articles received more than 8000 citations;
in 2009 his work was cited over 1000 times. His Hirsch index is 50.
Polman is member of the Executive Board of the National Nanoinitiative “High
tech systems and materials”, a 125 M€ national research program, program manager of the Nanophotonics program of the
Dutch National Nanotechnology Program NANONED, program manager of the
FOM Program Nanophotovoltaics, and member of the Program Committee for
the FOM-Shell program on Third generation solar cells. In 2004 he
co-initiated the FOM-Philips program Microphotonic Light Sources. In
2005, he co-authored the national Nanoscience strategy initiative for
FOM/NWO. Polman is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of
NanoLetters (Americal Chemical Society), the Advisory Editorial Board of
Physica B (Elsevier), member of the
Materials Science Advisory Board of the Leibnitz Research Center Rossendorf
(Germany),the Advisory Board of the Centre of Excellence for
Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics of the University of New
South Wales (Australia) and the International Advisory Board of the
University of Surrey Ion Beam Centre. In 2004-2005 he served as an elected member of the
Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society (Pittsburgh). In
2007 he was elected member of the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences (Koninklijke
Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen). In
2009 he was elected member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW).
Polman was chairman of the 11th International Conference on Ion Beam
Modification of Materials in 1998 and served as secretary of the
International Committee of IBMM until 2008. In 2008 he was appointed
Honorary Member of the committee. He co-organized three symposia at
meetings of the Materials Research Society, in 1994 (Boston), 1996 (San
Francisco), and 1997 (San Francisco). He was Volume Organizer (editor)
for the year-2000 volume of MRS Bulletin. In April 2003 he served as one
of the meeting chairs of the MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco. He was
co-chair of the Symposium Nanophotonic materials at the European
Material Research Society Meeting (Strasbourg, 2004), and served on the program committee of
many international conferences and workshops. Polman
was chairman of the first Gordon Research Conference Plasmonics - optics
at the nanoscale in 2006.
Albert Polman is married to the musicologist Dr. Philomeen Lelieveldt;
they have two children, Philine (12), and Fabian (10), and he and
Philomeen are active as singers in the chamber choir
Vocaal Ensemble COQU.
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