Group Members

Dr. Ruben Piliposian

Position at Malkalab: Vacuum Systems Engineer

Focus: Building and maintaining the vacuum systems and other critical systems for the HIGGINS 100 TW laser system. 

Current: Dr. Piliposian retired after leaving Malkalab and will travel and spend time with family. 

Dr. Yang Wan

Position at Malkalab: Staff Scientist

Focus: Developing advanced diagnostics for probing laser-plasma wakefield dynamics and novel techniques for manipulating gas structure for relativistic laser-plasma interaction

Current: Dr. Wan is now a full-rank professor at Zhengzhou University in China, leading his new team on strong field laser physics and advanced particle acceleration.

Dr. Dan Levy

Position at Malkalab: PhD

Focus: developing novel combined gas-foil targets for laser-plasma ion acceleration, studying low divergence ion beams emitted by a few-cycle kHz laser interacting with a solid target.

Current: Dr. Levy is working as a physicist at Connected Intelligence Systems, a start up developing products for diagnostics of power grids.

Dr. Slava Smartsev

Position at Malkalab: PhD

Focus: Developing and imploying a novel, long-focal depth optical element (Axiparabola) towards the goal of dephasingless acceleration. Development of spatio-temporal metrology.

Current: Dr. Smartsev is conducting postdoctoral researcher at Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée in France focusing on employing the axiparabola in a few cycle, kHz laser system.

Dr. Omri Seemann

Position at Malkalab: PhD

Focus: Researched optical shaping of dense near critical gas targets for intense interactions. We showed stable acceleration of energetic protons from near critical targets and also showed control of an intense laser pulse's astigmatic spatial phase which allows to modulate the interaction of laser wakefield accelerators.

Current: R&D / Data science specialist in High Tech industries ( Defense / Fintech / Healthcare ). Physics Consultant.

Barak Shmueli

Position at Malkalab: Intern

Focus:  Simulated computed tomography (CT) reconstructions of 3D gas density patterns for different nozzle structures and then measured interferometry 2D projection images to reconstruct the real density pattern in order to optimize the electron acceleration.

Current: Finishing bachelors degree at Hebrew University. 

Marie Fondaneche

Position at Malkalab : intern

Focus : Developing and imploying a z-scanning imaging technique for laser intensity profile measurement at focal spot. 

Current : 3D characterization of second harmonic response of biological tissues and nanostructures with a digital holography microscope.

Antoine Bourhis

Position at Malkalab : intern

Focus : Setting up a new interferometer to increase sensibility of gaz nozzle characterization. 

Current : Antoine has been hired in laboratoire d’optique appliquée as a research engineer to prepare his PhD on a kHz plasma accelerator.

Dr. Atul Sengar

Position at Malkalab: Postdoc

Focus: Optimizing beam transport for the electrons used in the radiotherapy project. 

Current: Dr. Sengar is the Head of R&D Department and Country Technical Head at Shreeji Cyclotrons India, where he oversees three commercial cyclotron facilities. 

Dr. Celine Hue

Position at Malkalab: Postdoc

Focus: PIC simulations on shock injection for the optimization of parameters for different electron use cases. 

Current: Dr. Hue is currently residing in France and working for Ansys, optimizing data managment. 

Daria Raspopova

Position at Malkalab: Msc

Focus: Improving control of gas density profiles for more efficient and stable laser-plasma acceleration

Current: Daria is currently living in France and working on mastering French. 

Eitan Soussan

Position at Malkalab: Intern

Focus: The development of the axiparabola for use in dephasingless acceleration. Data analysis and optimization. 

Current: Eitan is currently studying physics at Ecole Normale Superieure Lyon and is aiming to become a researcher in plasma physics

Theotim Berlioz

Position at Malkalab: Intern

Focus: The development of gas profiles optimized for laser guiding over many Rayleigh lengths.

Current: Theotim is currently doing a master IFCP M2 at the Ecole Normale Superieure after which he will do a PhD in the field.