Christian Haffner

Christian Haffner - Principal Member of Technical Staff, imec
Christian Haffner is a Principal Member of Technical Staff and the first one to receive imec’s tenure track. His tenure project investigates the fundamental limits of electro-optical devices for classical and quantum applications – or in simple words how small can a light switch be made. This research will eventually allow optical communication to happen at shorter and shorter distances even down to the chip-level. The quality of this research effort is confirmed by the competitive ERC starting grant being awarded to support his research. In 2019, he joined the 5-year Branco-Weiss Fellowship program. He did his Postdoc research on nano-scale opto-mechanical switches at NIST, Gaithersburg and ETH, Zurich. He earned his Ph.D. degree from ETH Zurich in 2018, which was recognized with the ETH Medal and Hans-Eggenberger Prize. His PhD research focused on using plasmonics as an active electro-optic device technology. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany)in 2012 and in 2013, respectively. He was the top-ranked student in his master class. During his study, he received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. His research has appeared in high-impact journals such as Nature, Nature Photonics, Science and Nano Letters. His publications have been highlighted by news outlets like the OSA’s Optics and Photonics News and the IEEE Spectrum.