Professor Francois Ladouceur
|
Degree/award |
Year |
Discipline/field |
Organisation and country |
|
Ph.D. |
1992 |
Optical Communication |
The Australian National University, Canberra |
|
Masters |
1987 |
Solid State Physics |
École Polytechnique, Montréal, Canada |
|
B. Eng. |
1985 |
Engineering Physics |
École Polytechnique, Montréal, Canada |
Prof Ladouceur graduated from Institute of Advanced Studies at ANU in 1992. He held a post-doctoral (research engineer) position at LETI (Grenoble) from 1992 to 1994 and worked as Research Fellow at ANU from 1994 to 1998. Following this early academic career, Prof Ladouceur moved to the private section in 1998 to commercialise his research output with Virtual Photonics. In 2001, Prof Ladouceur became the founding Managing Director of the Bandwidth Foundry Pty Ltd after successfully raising ~$20 million from private and public sources. Prof Ladouceur has joined UNSW in 2005 and developed a comprehensive research program that covers:
- Integrated optics
- Silica and diamond-based photonics
- Optical sensing networks
- Photonics-based brain/machine interfaces
A/Prof Ladouceur has made key contributions to both fundamental waveguide theory and applied integrated optics:
- Applied integrated optics: A/Prof Ladouceur introduced in 1995 a radically new approach to the design of waveguide path design. This approach, based on adiabatic parameterised paths has lead to significant improvement in both the size of integrated optics devices and of the ease of design.
- Waveguide theory: A/Prof Ladouceur suggested that stable spatial solitons induce in its supporting medium a waveguide which itself could carry light as a linear structure. A/Prof Ladouceur also suggested a powerful self-consistency approach to this problem that provided a mathematical alternative to the cumbersome (albeit powerful) inverse scattering approach.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
ARC Discovery (DP200102825) A Multi-Optrode Array for Closed-Loop Bionics, N Lovell, F Ladouceur, L. Silvestri, A Al Abed, $495k
Defence Innovation Network, Optical technologies for distributed array sonars, Prof F. Ladouceur, $100k
NHMRC Ideas Grant (APP2002282) Re-engineering the Future of Electrophysiological Measurements and Brain-Machine Interfaces Using a Novel Multi-Optrode Array, Nigel Lovell, Laura Poole-Warren, Francois Ladouceur, Amr Al Abed, Dorna Esrafilzadeh. $732k
ARC Discovery 2016 (DP160104625), Design of an optrode for next generation brain-machine interfaces, Prof Nigel Lovell, Prof Francois Ladouceur; Dr Amr Al Abed, $457.6k
CRC Project 2016, High performance optical telemetry system for ocean monitoring (CRC-P-49), Prof François Ladouceur, $1,014,320
NSW Department of Industry, Research Attraction and Acceleration Program (RAAP), High-performance optical telemetry system for ocean monitoring, $50k
US Office of Naval Research (ONR), Multi-Optrode Array for Neural Interfacing, 2018, US$360,000 ($485,000)
ACARP Grant 2018 (C28010), Towards better, safer mines – Optical technologies for software defined instrumentation, $335k
NSW Smart Sensing Network 2019 (CUPS-1) Distributed In-pipe Sensing: Distributed hydrophone arrays for leak detection, Prof F. Ladouceur, $337k
Prof Ladouceur's scientific contribution over the past twenty years covers a wide area of photonics technologies: from telecommunications, to sensing; from fabrication to simulation. Prof Ladouceur has lead large scale projects targeting the development of novel hybrid opto-electronics devices from their early design phase to their commercial realisation. Doing so, Prof Ladouceur has gained considerable expertise in modelling, design, material sciences, packaging and interfacing.
Optical sensing: Prof Ladouceur is a named inventor on the main patent underpinning a novel and disruptive approach to optical sensing in distributed networks. Based on liquid-crystal technology, this approach enables vast families of sensors to be read optically and thus to benefit from the advantages of optical networks over their electrical counterparts. An extension of this technology is now being applied to the brain/machine interface.
Brain/machine interface: Closely related to optical sensing, this major research effort leverages liquid-crystal-based technologies to read optically the neuronal activities within biological tissues. This approach potentially enables a quantum leap in the number of channels and offers substantial advantages over competing technologies.
Diamond waveguide: Prof Ladouceur directed the research effort at UNSW that lead to the first scalable all-diamond integrated circuits using a combination of photolithography, reactive ion etching (RIE) and focused ion beam (FIB) techniques with potential important applications in Quantum Computing and diamond based light- emitting diodes.