Biography
Umit Demirbas is currently a laser scientist in the Diavolezza team of the Laboratory for Nonlinear Optics at the Paul Scherrer Institute and a professor of electrical and electronics engineering at Antalya Bilim University, where he founded and continues to lead the Laser Technology Laboratory. A hands-on experimental laser scientist since 2000, his work spans ultrafast and solid-state laser systems, nonlinear optics, frequency conversion, and high-brightness THz source development. At PSI, he develops ultrafast laser and narrowband THz platforms for the LNO Laser Spectroscopy Laboratory and future applications at the SwissFEL Diavolezza end station.
He received his BS degrees in physics and electrical engineering from Koç University in 2004, his MS degree in materials science from Koç University in 2006, and his PhD degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 2010. Following early research work at Koç University and doctoral research at MIT, he held an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship at Konstanz University and later worked as a senior laser scientist at DESY before joining PSI.
Dr. Demirbas is an author and co-author of more than 100 journal papers on laser physics and ultrafast optics. He has attracted multiple externally funded research projects as principal investigator, including TÜBİTAK, European Union Marie Curie and Humboldt Foundation with total project budgets exceeding 1 million Swiss francs. He has also served the optics and photonics community by reviewing more than 250 journal manuscripts and more than 50 funding proposals, has co-supervised more than 15 undergraduate, MS, and PhD students, and has more than 15 years of university-level teaching experience.
Since 2021, he has been listed among the top 2% of scientists in the optics, optoelectronics and photonics subfield for yearly and/or career-long contributions. He is the recipient of the Turkish Science Academy Young Scientist Award in 2019. He was a European Union Marie Curie CIG Fellow from 2012 to 2016, an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow from 2010 to 2012, and an IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellow in 2009.”