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Each year, researchers, students and industrialists come together for the Jean Jerphagnon Prize, which rewards innovation in the field of optics-photonics. The jury and its president, Alain Aspect, professor at the Institut d'Optique and member of the Academy of Technologies, rewarded Antoine Dubrouil, physicist and founder of the company Femto Easy.
Antoine Dubrouil has a doctorate in laser physics and more specifically specializes in ultrafast lasers. His doctorate, obtained at the Center Lasers Intenses et Applications (Celia) in 2011, focused on the research, production, characterization and use of fast laser pulses from a few femtoseconds to attoseconds. These unprecedented temporal resolutions, hitherto unattainable by humans, opened the way to new applications in basic research, industry or medicine.
Antoine Dubrouil will develop a new laser source based on post compression and will decide to do a post-doc in Australia at Swinburne University of Technology. He will observe that the measuring instruments available on the market only partially meet the needs of researchers.
The researcher will then begin to develop his own tools based on new concepts that he will continue to explore in Italy at Politecnico di Milano for a second post-doc. In 2014, he returned to Celia with the ambition of creating a company based on his work, Femto Easy, which he would launch in 2016.
His company devotes a large part of its activity to R&D and develops measurement instruments for ultrafast (femtosecond) lasers that are both easy to use and very reliable. Unlike the devices of the state of the art which require a sharp alignment to obtain a measurement, its products can be directly placed in the laser beam and make it possible to obtain a measurement in a few seconds.
The Jean Jerphagnon award ceremony is part of the Optics-Photonics Meetings for the Industry of the Future organized by the Institut Mines-Télécom and the Académie des Technologies. Broadcast this year, via a webinar on July 9, its meetings highlight technological innovations in a wide variety of industries.
The Jean Jerphagnon Prize, organized by IMT and the Academy of Technologies with the support of the Mines-Télécom Foundation, aims to honor the memory and extend the work of Jean Jerphagnon, who died in 2005 and who led a remarkable career, from basic research to innovation, in the field of optics and photonics. This prize, amounting to € 10,000, aims to promote technological innovation and the dissemination of optics and photonics in all fields of application. It is awarded to a researcher or to an engineer of 40 years or less who proposes an innovative project with great scientific value or with strong industrial potential, marking a stage in his or her career, and comprising at least an optical or photonic element.
