Since 2018 Guillermo Pedro Acuna is a Full Professor at the Physics department of the University of Fribourg where he leads the Photonic Nanosystems group. He has pioneered the use of the DNA origami technique for nanophotonics focusing on the fabrication of optical antennas for enhanced spectroscopies. Prof. Acuna obtained his Physics diploma at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (2005) and his PhD degree at the LMU München (2010) under the supervision of Prof. Roland Kersting. He has done a Post-Doc at Prof. Hermann Gaub´s chair for Bio-physics at the LMU München (2010). From 2011 till 2017 he was group leader at Prof. Philip Tinnefeld´s chair at the Technical University of Braunschweig. In 2018, Prof. Acuna obtained a Full Professor (W3) position at the University of Rostock. His main interests are nanophotonics, plasmonics, DNA nanotechnology, nanoscopy, single molecule techniques and sensing. 

Mariano Barella is currently working on the understanding of energy transfer mechanisms between single photon emitters and 2D materials, and large-scale patterning of surfaces with DNA origami. He obtained his Ph.D. in Science and Technology with a major in Physics in 2018 at National University of San Martin in Buenos Aires under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Federico Golmar. Between 2018 and 2022, he carried out a post-doctoral stage with Prof. Dr. Fernando Stefani in Buenos Aires working in the field of plasmonics, developing a nanothermometry technique to measure the temperature of single nanoparticles. After a short period at Adolphe Merkle Institute in Fribourg, Switzerland, where he built an optical microscope to be used for plasmonic optical trapping, Mariano joined Photonic Nanosystems group as post-doctoral fellow in August 2022. 

Karol Michal Kolataj joined the Photonics Nanosystems group as a Post-Doc and a subgroup leader in February 2022. He received his B.Sc. degree in Biotechnology (2012) from Warsaw University of Life Sciences, and his M.Sc. degree (2014) in Chemistry and Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry (2018) from the University of Warsaw. Afterwards, he held a Post-Doc and Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the group of Prof. Tim Liedl, LMU Munich. His areas of expertise include the fabrication of plasmonic nanoparticles, DNA nanotechnology, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. 

Fangjia got his Bachelor degree of Material Chemistry from Central South University of Forestry and Technology (Changsha city, China) in 2016 and a Masters degree in Material Engineering from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China) in 2019. During his Masters, he focused on separation of single-chirality single-walled carbon nanotubes, its optical properties and biomedical applications under supervision of Prof. Huaping Liu. He is currently studying optical properties of single molecule emitter based on nanoantenna and DNA origami as a Ph.D. student in the group of Prof. Acuna. Enjoying the joy of tranquility and thinking (or in a daze) may be his common behavior. 

Germán Chiarelli is a PhD student at the Photonic Nanosystems group since summer 2019. He studied at the Universidad de Buenos Aires where he got his Physics diploma in 2018. His main works were in optical Printing and super resolution techniques. His hard skills range from software programming in Python for instrument communication and synchronization, up to building and upgrading optical setups. 

Nathan Fuchs joined the Photonics Nanosystems group as a scientific collaborator in April 2021. 

Morgane Loretan has joined the group of Photonics Nanosystem in middle of 2019. She has previously obtained a Master in applied physics at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2019 and her Bachelor in physics in 2016. Her Master thesis was about LEDs and supervised by Prof. Nicolas Grandjean. During her studies she has also completed an internship of six months at Centre Suisse d’Électronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM) in Basel in the section of micro-optics and photonics lead by Dr. Rolando Ferrini. Outside from her passion for Physics, she has two main hobbies. She likes to play the Cornet in a Brass Band in Savièse (Valais) and the violin. She also practices archery once or twice per week as well as competitions. 

Nicole Siegel Navarro is a current PhD student at the Photonic Nanosystems Labotratory. She got her degree in Chemical Science at the University of Buenos Aires in 2019. As undergraduate she collaborate at the Organic Chemistry Department in the section of Glycobiological Synthesis lead by Prof. Carla Marino and in 2017 joined the developmental neurobiology laboratory at the Leloir Institute under supervision of Dr. Guillermo Lanuza where she focus her research in genetics and molecular biology. 

Aleksandra has previously obtained her Bachelor (2016) and Master degree (2018) in physics and chemistry studying Nanostructure Engineering at University of Warsaw working on colloidal nanoparticles and Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. Recently she has graduated European Joint Master in Advanced Spectroscopy in Chemistry (ASC) at University of Lille (France), Leipzig (Germany) and Alma Mater Studiorum Bologna University (Italy). She joined our group in 2020 as a PhD student and a member of SuperCol ITN project (https://supercol.eu/). 

Nicco Corduri joined the Photonics Nanosystems group as a PhD student in October 2023. He received his Bachelor's degree in Fundamental and Applied Physics in 2021 from the University of Lorraine and his Master's degree in Applied Physics and Engineering Physics specialized in Photonics and Optics for Materials in 2023 from the University of Lorraine and the engineering school CentraleSupélec. During his Master's degree, he had the opportunity to work on the design and optimization of spray pyrolysis thin film deposition for photovoltaic applications at the LMOPS laboratory in Metz under the supervision of Prof. Sidi Hamady. He is currently using his knowledge in semiconductor materials, taking part of the 3D-BRICKS project, working on the next-generation of electronic nanodevices using Hybrid DNA-nanostructures/carbon nanotubes.

Since 2018, Mathias Lakatos started together with Prof. Guillermo Pedro Acuna to set up the Photonic Nanosystems group at the Physics department of the University of Fribourg. From 2013 to 2018, he was research group leader at the Department of Chemistry at TU Dresden in Prof. Michael Mertig’s lab. At the TU Dresden, Mathias studied and obtained his PhD degree in material science in the Department of Material Science and Nanotechnology under supervision of Prof. Wolfgang Pompe in 2013. 

After a post-doctoral stay in Tim Leidl's lab, Mauricio Pilo-Pais joined the Photonic Nanosystems group in 2019 where he is developing nanoscale elements for plasmonic and photonics applications. Mauricio obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at Duke University in 2014 under supervision of Gleb Finkelstein, and a dual B.S. in Physics and Chemistry from the University of Florida in 2008. 

Lu Zhang has joined Photonic Nanosystems group as post-doctoral fellow in August 2020 and she is currently working on the detection of circulating tumor cells by SERS using DNA-based systems as signal amplifier. She has obtained her dual-Ph.D. degrees on Material science at Sorbonne University and Nanyang Technological University in 2018 under supervision of Prof. Souhir Boujday in Paris and Prof. Bo Liedberg in Singapore. During her Ph.D., she was focusing on the design of plasmonic nanoparticles and their use for biotoxins immunosensing. Afterwards, she also worked on a post-doctoral project on Pseudo-chiral nanoresonators for the optical detection of biomolecules under supervision of Dr. Bruno Gallas in Paris Institute of Nanoscience (INSP) and Prof. Souhir Boujday in Laboratory of Reactivity of Surface (LRS). 

Maria Sanz-Paz is a postdoc in the Photonics Nanosystems group since October 2020. She received her Bachelor in Physics in 2013 from the University of Santiago the Compostela, Spain. Two years later, she graduated as MSc in Photonics at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany. She did her Master Thesis on DNA origami-assembled plasmonic antennas in the group of Philip Tinnefeld. In 2020, she obtained a PhD in Photonics from ICFO, Spain, at the group of Maria Garcia-Parajo, where she worked on connecting recent developments in the field of nanophotonics with bioimaging and single-molecule detection.