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

2025 EPS Fresnel Prizes

Applied aspects
Photo_Cristina Benea-Chelmus


The 2025 Fresnel Prize for applied aspects is awarded to Ileana-Cristina Benea-Chelmus,  EPFL STI-IEM-HYLAB,  Lausanne, Switzerland For contributions to terahertz and microwave photonics, including the development of integrated electro-optic platforms for field correlation sensing, high-speed modulators, and miniaturized on-chip detectors for classical and quantum domains, bridging applied and fundamental physics. 

Biography
Cristina Benea-Chelmus

Cristina Benea-Chelmus is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Engineering at EPFL since January 2022. 

She leads the Hybrid Photonics Laboratory which develops hybrid electronic-photonic chips for both applied and fundamental sciences. Her research interfaces millimeterwave and terahertz signals with optical ones, aiming to provide innovative solutions for high-capacity communications, millimeterwave quantum circuits, chip-based sensing and time-domain ranging technologies. 

Prior to her appointment, she was a Postdoctoral scientist at Harvard, leading efforts on tunable metasurfaces, supported by the Hans-Eggenberger Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation. She received her Ph.D. in 2018 from ETH Zurich on quantum metrology of vacuum field fluctuations, for which she received multiple recognitions, and studied at KIT, Germany until 2013. 

 

Fundamental aspects
Prof. Junqiu Liu

The 2025 Fresnel Prize for fundamental aspects is awarded to Junqiu Liu, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, Anhui, China for pioneering contributions to ultralow-loss silicon nitride integrated photonics and its applications in nonlinear optics, quantum information, and frequency metrology, bridging fundamental and applied physics.                                                                                                   

Biography
Junqiu Liu

Junqiu Liu is a principal scientist at Shenzhen International Quantum Academy and a tenure-track assistant professor at Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He received Ph.D. from EPFL in 2020, MSc (with highest distinction) from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2016, and BSc from USTC in 2012. His research lies in the interdisciplinary domains of integrated photonics, nonlinear optics, quantum information, MEMS, and microwave photonics. His PhD thesis entitled “Silicon Nitride Integrated Nonlinear Photonics” was awarded 2021 EPFL Doctorate Award, “For ground breaking experiments in the field of chip-scale frequency combs and the extraordinary record of scientific accomplishments”. His research has seeded several startups. He has being serving as an associate editor at Physical Review Applied since 2024. 

2023 EPS Fresnel Prizes

Fundamental aspects
xcgong_Fresnel_2023

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
PHOTO-Chao-Zuo

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
Maiuri-176x200

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
Zuerch-j18061809-205x300

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.