Dr. Enrique García-Caurel

Main professional position
Researcher at Ecole Polytechnique, France

Main professional activity (LPICM, Ecole Polytechnique)
- Development of innovative optical instruments, imaging polarimeters and spectroscopic ellipsometers, for materials sciences, biology, botanic or biomedical optics
- Strong collaboration with industrial partners
- Study of the optical response of nanostructured materials and scattering media
- Exploration of unconventional states and applications of polarized light


Achievements
1) Creation of a characterization facility at Synchrotron SOLEIL using polarized light
In 2015 I started a fruitful collaboration with the SMIS beamline at synchrotron SOLEIL to create an optical characterization facility based on broadband spectroscopic polarimeters and an innovative full-polarimetric Mueller microscope with infrared radiation. The new microscope will for sure highlight the vision that we have nowadays of multiple types of samples from biological cuts, vegetal preparations, to thin films made of the newest materials for engineering applications in domains like energy production and storage, lighting or electric automobile.

2) Development of applications of polarized light in Biophotonics and Materials Science
Since 2003 I have been actively involved in biophotonics with the use of polarized light. I have contributed to the development of a multimodal imaging polarimeter and developed a number of collaborations with high level international research groups.

3) Optical instrumentation
Development of advanced spectroscopic and imaging polarimeters. Development of 3 innovative polarimeters. A) A spectroscopic polarimeter based on liquid crystal variable retarders designed to work in the VIS-NIR.B) A broadband Mueller polarimeter based in achromatic optical elements to work in a wide spectral range from UV to MIR. C) A multimodal polarimetric microscope designed to characterize the properties of light scattered by different materials.