I grew up in a small town in Slovenia [1], a country in central Europe. Already at a young age, my goal was clear – I was determined to pursue my dream of becoming a scientist, pushing the frontiers of human knowledge.
In 2012, I graduated from general high school (“gymnasium”) with honors – amongst the top 3% of my generation in the country.
During my BSc studies of Electrical Engineering – Electronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering [2], University of Ljubljana [3], I received the Award of the Dean, which is awarded to the best student of the generation, two years in a row. Besides academic work, I was very involved in several student projects, competitions and an active member of Electrical Engineering Students’ European Association (EESTEC) [4]. During the 3rd year of my studies, I did research within the Laboratory of Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics [5] and presented my results [6] at an International Conference [7].
After graduating in 2015 with one of the best average grades in my generation (9.82/10), I continued with MSc studies of Electronics.
In 2016, I was a Summer Student at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research [8, 9], as the only student from Slovenia. Besides working on my project within the Solid State Detectors group [10, 11] which specializes in R&D activities around semiconductor particle detectors and radiation damage [12], I attended lectures on a wide range of topics (from Particle Physics to Computing and Engineering) [13], hands-on workshops and presented my project in a Poster Session [14].
In October 2016, I started my exchange year at Technical University Munich (TUM) [15], which ranks among the top Universities in Europe [16]. After the first semester with subjects and exams, I joined the Walter Schottky Institute [17], TUM to work on my Master Thesis. In September 2017, I defended my thesis entitled “Unidirectional Coupling of Light from Nanowire Lasers into Silicon Waveguides” [18] and secured the best possible grade (1,0 at TUM and 10 at Uni. of Ljubljana).
I extended my stay at the Walter Schottky Institute as a Research Assistant for a few months to work on experimental tasks. Within Prof. Jon Finley’s [19] Chair for Semiconductor Nanostructures and Quantum Systems (E24) [20, 21], I contributed to cutting-edge research efforts at the interface of solid-state physics, photonics and materials science [22].
In early 2018 I started pursuing a Ph.D. in Physics at ETH Zürich [22] and joined a world-leading Quantum Optoelectronics Group [24], led by Prof. Jérôme Faist [25], a pioneer of quantum cascade lasers [26]. My research focuses on terahertz frequency combs based on quantum cascade lasers [27].
References
[1] Slovenia, Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenia
[2] Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana. http://www.fe.uni-lj.si/en/
[3] University of Ljubljana. https://www.uni-lj.si/eng/
[4] Website of Electrical Engineering Students’ European Association. https://eestec.net/
[5] Laboratory of Optoelectronics and Photovoltaics, FEE UL. http://lpvo.fe.uni-lj.si/en/
[6] Urban Senica, Miha Filipič. Simulation of crystalline silicon solar cell top contact using ASPIN3 and COMSOL Multiphysics simulators. MIDEM 2015, 51st International Conference on Microelectronics, Devices and Materials with the Workshop on Terahertz and Microwave Systems. urbansenica.com/wp-content/files/Senica_MIDEM2015.pdf
[7] MIDEM 2015, 51st International Conference on Microelectronics, Devices and Materials with the Workshop on Terahertz and Microwave Systems. http://www.midem-drustvo.si/conf2015/
[8] CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. http://home.cern/
[9] CERN Summer Students. https://home.cern/students-educators/summer-student-programme
[10] Urban Senica, Marcos Fernández. Optimization of a simulator of Transient Currents: parallelizing TRACS. https://cds.cern.ch/record/2208672?ln=en
[11] CERN EP-DT-DD: Solid State Detectors group. http://ssd-rd.web.cern.ch/ssd-rd/
[12] CERN RD50 – Radiation hard semiconductor devices for very high luminosity colliders. http://rd50.web.cern.ch/rd50/
[13] CERN Summer Lecture Programme 2016. http://summer-timetable.web.cern.ch/summer-timetable/#2016-06-28
[14] Urban Senica, Marcos Fernández: Calculation of effective space charge of irradiated Si detectors: Comparing simulations with measurements. urbansenica.com/files/Poster_SumStudCERN2016_UrbanSenica.pdf
[15] Technical University Munich. https://www.tum.de/en/homepage/
[16] Shanghai University Ranking. http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings/Technical-University-Munich.html
[17] Walter Schottky Institute, TUM. http://www.wsi.tum.de/
[18] Urban Senica. Unidirectional Coupling of Light from Nanowire Lasers into Silicon Waveguides, Master Thesis. urbansenica.com/files/MScThesis_TUM_UrbanSenica.pdf
[19] Prof. Jonathan J. Finley’s profile on TUM Professors’ website. http://www.professoren.tum.de/en/finley-jonathan/
[20] Chair for Semiconductor Nanostructures and Quantum Systems (E24). https://www.wsi.tum.de/groups.php?group=finley
[21] Nanowire Group, E24, WSI. https://www.wsi.tum.de/sub_group.php?group=Koblmueller
[22] Stettner, T., Kostenbader, T., Ruhstorfer, D., Bissinger, J., Riedl, H., Kaniber, M., Koblmüller, G. and Finley, J. (2017). Direct Coupling of Coherent Emission from Site-Selectively Grown III–V Nanowire Lasers into Proximal Silicon Waveguides. ACS Photonics, 4(10), pp.2537-2543. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsphotonics.7b00805?journalCode=apchd5
[23] ETH Zürich. https://www.ethz.ch/en.html
[24] Quantum Optoelectronics Group, ETH Zürich. http://www.qoe.ethz.ch/
[25] Prof. Jérôme Faist on Google Scholar. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AfqWB1oAAAAJ&hl=en
[26] Quantum Cascade Laser. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cascade_laser
[27] Jérôme Faist, Gustavo Villares, Giacomo Scalari, Markus Rösch, Christopher Bonzon,
Andreas Hugi, and Mattias Beck. Quantum Cascade Laser Frequency Combs. Nanophotonics, Vol 5, 2 (2016). https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/nanoph.2016.5.issue-2/nanoph-2016-0015/nanoph-2016-0015.xml