Albert Polman is a scientific group
leader and director of the FOM-Institute AMOLF, a research laboratory of the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental
Research on Matter (FOM), in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is associated with
the University of Amsterdam as a professor of photonic materials for photovoltaics. Polman
is
member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the
Materials Research Society (USA) and recipient of ERC Advanced Investigator Grant.
In 2012 he won the ENI Renewable Energy Prize, together with Harry
Atwater.
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 (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. He was adjunct professor of nanophotonics
at the University of Utrecht from 1996-2011. Since 2012, Polman is professor
of Photonic Materials for Photovoltaics at the University of Amsterdam.
Polman's main research interest is to control light at the nanoscale.
His group studies the propagation, dispersion and confinement of light
in metallic and dielectric nanostructures. He investigates optical metamaterials: artificially made materials with
engineered permittivity and permeability. Polman is the inventor of
Angle-Resolved Cathodoluminescence Imaging Spectroscopy (ARCIS), a novel
imaging technique with deep-subwavelength resolution. A key topic in
Polman's research concerns nanophotonic design principles to achieve
ultra-high efficiency solar cells.
Polman's group has published over 200
articles in international journals, 80 conference proceedings, holds
four patents and has six other patent applications pending. He has given over
100 invited talks at international
conferences, several of them as plenary or keynote speaker. Polman's articles received more than
12.000 citations; his Hirsch index is 64 and his field-normalized citation
impact is 5.18 times the world average. The relative representation of
his papers in the top-1% best cited papers worldwide is 18.83.
Polman is member of the Executive Board of the NanoNextNL, a 125 M€ national
nanoscience and technology program; program manager of the Nanophotonics program of the
Dutch National Nanotechnology Program NANONED; program manager of the
FOM Program Nanophotovoltaics; member of the Steering Committee of
Physics @ FOM Veldhoven, the yearly national physics conference in The
Netherlands; member of the Steering Committee of the FOM-Philips
Industrial Partnership Program Improved solid state light sources; and member
of the Program Committee of the FOM-Shell/Helianthos Industrial
Partnership Program Third generation solar cells.
Polman is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of
NanoLetters (Americal Chemical Society) and the Advisory Board of the Centre of Excellence for
Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics of the University of New
South Wales (Australia). 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).
In 2010 he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. In 2012 he won, together
with Harry Atwater, the ENI Renewable Energy Prize, the main
international prize for research on renewable energy
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 the OSA
conference on Optical nanostructures and advanced materials for
photovoltaics (Eindhoven, 2012). He 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. In
2010 he was appointed Fellow
of the Materials Research Society.
Albert Polman is married to the musicologist Dr. Philomeen Lelieveldt;
they have two children, Philine, and Fabian. In his free time he is
member of the chamber choir
Vocaal Ensemble COQU.
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