Since Sep. 2010, Hugues de Riedmatten is an ICREA Research Professor and group leader in quantum optics at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona. He obtained a Masters in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in 1999, and a PhD in experimental quantum optics from the University of Geneva in 2003, for his work on long distance quantum communication in optical fiber. He was then postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, where he worked on linitial demonstrations of quantum networks with cold cold atomic ensembles and single photons. In 2006, he was appointed senior researcher at the Univ. of Geneva, where he led the solid state quantum memory activities. He has published more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has given over 90 talks, both in international conferences and in invited seminars. He was the recipient of the Barcelona City Prize 2017, of an ERC Starting Grant and of a Frontier Research grant from the US Moore Foundation.

Hugues de Riedmatten leads the Quantum Photonics group at ICFO. His research interests are in quantum information science (QIS) and quantum optics. QIS is a research field that aims at controlling quantum coherence in light and matter in order to enable new information processing capabilities impossible with classical resources. He is interested in the quantum control of light matter interaction between single photons and atomic ensembles implemented with rare-earth doped solids and cold atomic gases. Other research lines include quantum non-linear optics with Rydberg atoms, and the detection and manipulation of single ions in the solid-state. The goal is to develop the quantum technology to implement quantum information networks and quantum repeaters. A more fundamental goal is to enable the observation of fascinating quantum effects, such as entanglement, with distant material systems and to explore the limits of quantum coherence in complex material systems.