LAUREATE IN BREAKTHROUGH CATEGORY

We are approaching a new frontier in shrinking technologies. Progress in computer development has been slowing down, and scientists have been trying ever more insistently to use particles of light, photons, for transmitting and processing information.

Polaritons are quasiparticles that combine properties of both light and matter. They can travel at the speed of light, like photons, while also exhibiting electrons' ability to interact. This has enabled the exploration of a new principle for quantum computing. Polaritons have essentially enabled us to build new, miniature-sized computers capable of performing highly complex tasks in an energy-efficient way, using organic transistors instead of their electronic counterparts.

Pavlos Lagoudakis is one of the key figures in the advancement of polariton physics. His accomplishments include a multitude of groundbreaking scientific achievements, such as exploring the fundamental properties of polaritons, including their Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), where many quantum particles act as a single quantum object.

Pavlos Lagoudakis is awarded the VYZOV Prize in the Breakthrough category for developing a new type of computers based on hybrid light-matter particles. He has developed a polariton-based transistor operating at room temperature and a prototype polariton computer, paving the way for a new type of computers based on harnessing the properties of light and matter.

Pavlos Lagoudakis graduated from the University of Athens, Greece and received his PhD in physics from the University of Southampton, UK in 2003. He has headed research teams all over the world for more than 10 years. He is a Visiting Professor with the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), a recipient of the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Quantum Electronics, and the author of more than 200 scientific publications with an h-index of 47. He became Head of Skoltech’s Laboratory of Hybrids Photonics in 2016, and was appointed Vice President for Photonics in 2022. Today, he serves as Skoltech’s Senior Vice President for Basic Research.