Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

"Science is a Pipeline" is the concept that more often than not it's basic curiosity-driven discovery research that supplies the ideas, the understanding, and the concepts which eventually make their way into innovation, commercial impact and social benefits.
My research, with my team members, begins with the science of the interaction between extremely short pulses of intense laser light and matter. At its most basic, I’m interested in how the relationships between light and matter change -- qualitatively, fundamentally -- in the case of the most intense light anyone can produce on Earth.
The things we learn, and the techniques and tools we develop along the way, we're then able to use towards creative innovations. My team and I have taken new physics-knowledge we’ve developed, and used it as a foundation to invent new kinds of laser materials-processing. We’ve also used the new science we’ve found in laser materials-processing to create new and less-invasive ways to do arthroscopic knee surgery, using rapid trains of very short pulses.
Ultra-intense laser-matter interaction: My most basic and curiosity-driven physics, needs access to the highest-intensity lasers worldwide, taking opportunities in France, the UK, and the USA, as well as at home. Our theoretical work needs access to extremely powerful multi-processor computers to run simulations, though we also work some problems with pen and paper. For some years, this has made contributions in atomic physics, nonlinear optics, relativistic laser-plasma physics and astrophysics. It has also provided the foundations of my commercially significant applied-physics research.
Applications of ultrashort-pulse intense optical physics: This foundational science program always very closely informs the applied-physics research I do, closer to home. We use the same kind of ultrafast lasers, but not scaled to the world’s highest optical intensities. These lasers, of the same basic technology, we invent or buy and operate in my own laboratories. We consistently discover qualitatively new ways to 'treat' materials and biotissues: modifying structure, changing functionality, mitigating problems and creating new opportunities, new tools, new approaches. This gives students of all kinds -- and driven by different career goals -- an exceptional opportunity to develop their deep understanding in physics, medical biophysics and optics, while supporting the ambition of most to contribute to society in the most important ways they can imagine.
What unifies all of these efforts -- what has created research projects funded by CHRP or NSERC-Strategic funding, led to NSERC-Engage and direct support from industrial partners, what has in turn benefitted from these other sources, and what also ties all of it together -- has been NSERC Discovery program funding.
"Des chercheurs qui cherchent, on en trouve. Des chercheurs qui trouvent, on en cherche." -Charles de Gaulle