Two EPS/QEOD Fresnel Prizes are awarded for outstanding contributions to quantum electronics and optics made by young scientists before the age of 35 (as of December 31st during the year of CLEO/Europe-EQEC). There is one prize for fundamental aspects and one prize for applied aspects. The prize winners are each to receive a medal and 2000 euros.

Charter

2023 EPS Fresnel Prizes

Fundamental aspects
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The 2023 Fresnel Prize for fundamental aspects is awarded to Xiaochun Gong, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, for outstanding contributions to the field of attosecond science and for developing attosecond coincidence metrology to ultrafast photonics.

Biography
Xiaochun Gong

Xiaochun Gong received his Ph.D. in physics from East China Normal University of Shanghai, China, in 2017, with a thesis on Probing the ultrafast ionization and dissociation dynamics of molecules in strong laser fields. He performed his post-doc research at ETH Zürich, where he started his attosecond science research by constructing a new attosecond coincidence interferometer to realize the attosecond timing of local electron emission in small, size-resolved water. After that, he returned back to ECNU. Currently, he is a professor in charge of attosecond science development, and his main research interest is the development of attosecond metrology through 3D-momenta and optical spectroscopy to probe and control the ultrafast electron dynamics from atoms molecules to clusters and even condensed matter 

Applied aspects
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The 2023 Fresnel Prize for applied aspects is awarded to Zuo Chao, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Jiangsu, China, for pioneering contributions to computational phase imaging and metrology, particularly for noninterferometic quantitative phase imaging and high-speed 3D optical metrology.

Biography
Zuo Chao

Zuo Chao is a professor in optical engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST), China. He leads the Smart Computational Imaging Laboratory (SCILab: www.scilaboratory.com) and is also the director of the Smart Computational Imaging Research Institute of NJUST. He has long been engaged in the development of novel Computational Imaging and Measurement technologies, with a focus on Phase Measuring Imaging Metrology. He has published >200 peer-reviewed articles with over 12,000 citations. These researches have been featured on journal cover (including Light, Optica, LPR, PhotoniX, AP, etc.) over 30 times. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of PhotoniX and OLEN. He is a Fellow of SPIE and Optica, and listed as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.

2021 EPS Fresnel Prizes

Applied aspects
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The 2021 Fresnel Prize for applied aspects is awarded to Margherita Maiuri, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, for outstanding achievements in ultrafast optical spectroscopy, unveiling primary light-induced processes in bio-molecules and nanostructures with sub-10-fs pulses.


Biography
Margherita Maiuri

Margherita Maiuri received her PhD in Physics in 2014 at Politecnico di Milano, specializing in the field of ultrafast optics and spectroscopy. Later she obtained a Marie Curie Global Fellowship and worked at Princeton University (USA) for three years. Currently she is Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of Politecnico di Milano where she supervises the Ultrafast Spectroscopy Laboratory division focused on the study of complex systems for light-energy conversion. Her main research interests include the understanding of femtosecond dynamics of light-induced mechanisms in biological/biomimetic systems and nanostructures.&nbsp;<br>She has published &gt;40 peer-reviewed articles, including publications in Science, Nature Photonics, Nature Chemistry, Nature Materials journals. She received the L’Oréal UNESCO for Women in Science Fellowship (2018) and the ENI award – Debut in Research (2015).

Fundamental aspects
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The 2021 Fresnel Prize for fundamental aspects is awarded to Michael Zuerch, University of California Berkeley, USA for outstanding contributions to the field of ultrafast condensed-matter science and for the application of linear and nonlinear X-ray spectroscopies to the investigation of quantum phenomena.

Biography
Michael Zuerch

Michael Zuerch graduated from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, in 2010. He completed his PhD in Physics at the same institution in 2014 working on high-resolution imaging using laser-driven extreme ultraviolet sources based on high harmonic generation. He then joined the research groups of Stephen Leone and Daniel Neumark at UC Berkeley as a Feodor Lynen Fellow studying condensed phase quantum phenomena using attosecond extreme ultraviolet sources. At present, he is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department of Chemistry. His research interests include studying ultrafast dynamics and phase transitions in correlated solids using laboratory attosecond sources and developing and applying nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy at free-electron lasers.