Summary
I am Innovation Ambassador for M Squared Lasers in Berlin, Germany, and an academic visitor in the Photonics Group, Department of Physics at Imperial College.
I studied Physics at Imperial College, completing my BSc in 2006, before obtaining my MSc in Optics and Photonics in 2007. I stayed on at Imperial to complete a PhD in Laser Physics and Nonlinear Optics in 2011, supervised by Prof Mike Damzen. During my PhD I developed high average power pulsed (modelocked and Q-switched) diode-pumped solid-state lasers, largely based on Nd-doped gain media operating at 1μm and 1.3μm, with the aim of producing highly-engineered laser systems for materials processing and biomedical imaging applications.
Post-PhD, I was awarded an EPSRC Knowledge Transfer Secondment where I spent a year working for an Imperial spin-out company, Midaz Lasers, working to develop "productised" laser systems based on the technology explored during my PhD. Immediately following this, I was awarded a Doctoral Prize Fellowship at Imperial to develop diode-pumped alexandrite lasers and amplifiers with a broad application-base in mind. Between 2012 and 2016 I was the Work Package Leader for a European Space Agency funded project: "Diode-pumped alexandrite lasers for remote sensing", and was responsible for the management and day-to-day running of the technical tasks of the project.
Since January 2017 I have been based in Berlin. I was a research scientist at the Max Born Institute für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie for almost a year, developing optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers (OPCPA) with Dr Mark Merö, for Attosecond Science and COLTRIMS experiments.
Since March 2018, I've been working with M Squared to expand their innovation activities in Germany. At M Squared our mission is to develop light-based technologies that can be used to address some of society's greatest challenges. Our innovation activities are particularly focussed on applications in quantum technology, biophotonics, and chemical sensing.
If you'd like to hear a brief, accessible explanation about using lasers to monitor the earth, you can watch this (slightly embarrassing) video and this (even more embarrassing) video from 2016's World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions.
In 2016, I became one of the World Economic Forum's Young Scientists, an honour that acknowledges and "brings together the most forward-thinking and advanced young scientific minds in the world".
In 2019 I was selected to be one of the Optical Society's Ambassadors, a role that involves mentoring and providing professional development support to students and early-career professionals.
Publications
Journals
Thomas G, Minassian A, Damzen MJ, 2018, Optical vortex generation from a diode-pumped alexandrite laser, Laser Physics Letters, Vol:15, ISSN:1612-2011
Parali U, Sheng X, Minassian A, et al., 2017, Diode-pumped Alexandrite laser with passive SESAM Q-switching and wavelength tunability, Optics Communications, Vol:410, ISSN:0030-4018, Pages:970-976
Conference
Arbabzadah EA, Kerridge-Johns W, Thomas GM, et al., 2019, High efficiency TEM <inf>00</inf> diode end-pumped Alexandrite laser
Teppitaksak A, Thomas GM, Damzen MJ, 2019, Gain-switched diode laser seeding of ultra-high-gain Nd: YVO <inf>4</inf> bounce amplifier system as a versatile pulsed laser source
Thomas GM, Minassian A, Damzen MJ, 2019, Directly diode-side-pumped alexandrite slab lasers in the bounce geometry and optical vortex generation