Darrick Chang is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO. He obtained his bachelor's degree in physics from Stanford University in 2001, and his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 2008. Subsequently, he held a prize postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. In 2011, Darrick joined ICFO as the leader of the Theoretical Quantum Nanophotonics group. He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2015, and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2021. He has been involved in many previous/current international projects, including as a PI and scientific coordinator of European FET-Open projects GRASP and DAALI, as a PI in the Quantum Flagship project QIA and QuantERA project QuSiED, and as a foreign collaborator in US MURI projects QOMAND and Photonic Quantum Matter. He has approximately 85 publications, including 16 in the Nature family of journals, which have been cited over 17,000 times (Google Scholar).

The research of Prof. Chang and his Theoretical Quantum Nanophotonics group at ICFO is based upon a vision that quantum effects are at the forefront of future technologies and discoveries, and that nanophotonic systems will be a prominent platform for this frontier. Specifically, they aim to harness the unique configurability, large optical forces, and strong light-matter interaction strengths achievable in nanophotonic systems to produce new applications and phenomena involving matter and light, which have no analogue in macroscopic setups. The group also develops theoretical techniques that enable a better understanding of the complex phenomena at play. The work is highly inter-disciplinary, and the group explores the potential impact across atomic physics, quantum optics, nonlinear optics, nano-mechanics, low-dimensional materials, and quantum information science. They also collaborate with leading experimental groups to bring their theoretical ideas toward reality.