Albert Polman

Albert Polman is a scientific group leader at the FOM Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he heads the program “Light management in new photovoltaic materials.” He is a professor of photonic materials for photovoltaics at the University of Amsterdam. Polman obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Utrecht in 1989. He was a postdoctoral researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories until 1991 and then became a group leader at AMOLF. In 2003, he spent a sabbatical year at CALTECH; from 2006 to 2013 he served as director of AMOLF. Polman's research focuses on nanophotonics: the control, understanding and application of light at the nanoscale, with special emphasis on light management in solar cells and optical metamaterials. He is the co-founder of Delmic BV, a start-up company that commercializes the ARCIS technique. Polman is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of MRS and recipient of an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (2010), the ENI Renewable Energy Prize (2012) and the Physica Prize of the Dutch Physical Society (2014).