Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Maurizio Burla (born in 1982, Italian) holds the Chair of High Frequency Technology and Photonics at TU Berlin, Germany. His research interests are at the intersection of integrated photonics, microwave engineering, plasmonics and wireless communications. After a PhD in integrated microwave photonics at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands (with Chris Roeloffzen and Wim Van Etten), Maurizio moved to INRS-EMT, Montreal, Canada (with Jose Azana) as a FQRNT fellow, to work on microwave and all-optical signal processing on silicon photonic devices. He demonstrated a versatile platform for multiple all-optical and ultrafast microwave signal processing functions based on waveguide Bragg gratings, in collaboration with the University of British Columbia (with Lukas Chrostowski). In 2015 he moved to the Institute of Electromagnetic Fields, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (with Juerg Leuthold), to work on microwave plasmonics and THz wireless communications. From 2017 to 2021 he led an SNF Ambizione project at ETH during which he demonstrated plasmonic modulators with record bandwidth and used them to realize high-dynamic range analog optical links over >100 GHz bandwidth and operating at sub-THz frequencies. For his research contributions on programmable integrated photonic processors he received several Best Paper Awards at the flagship conference on Microwave Photonics. He recently received an ERC Starting Grant to develop his vision on photonics-based THz signal processing at TU Berlin.
Microwave photonics and plasmonics for THz wireless applications
Working on ultrafast optical processing with special focus on integrated-waveguide technologies for all-optical signal processing for a range of applications, including next-generation telecommunication systems, ultrafast optical signal measurement, optical computing, and integrated microwave photonics.
The main focus of my 4-years work has been the development of advanced photonic integrated beamformers for phased array antenna systems, optical delay lines for slow-light applications, photonic signal generation and optical heterodyning, using photonic chips based on optical ring resonators, realized in the very low-loss TriPleX waveguide technology (http://www.lionixbv.nl/integratedoptics/triplex.html). My PhD research was carried out within the MEMPHIS project framework (http://www.smartmix-memphis.nl/), a large national project aiming at merging photonics and electronics in integrated systems (http://www.utwente.nl/ewi/te/projects/mwp/Nano_Photonics/).