Alireza Ghasemifard (ESR1, TUD) is pursuing his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Heine and Dr. Agnieszka Kuc at TUD. He applies theoretical methods to study the impact of strain (tensile, biaxial, isotropic and shear) on the electronic and transport properties in 2DS, with consideration of the effect of temperature, stacking, environment and defects. He will be seconded for 6 months at SCM (The Netherlands), for developing strain-dependent analytical tight-binding matrix elements. His research benefits from the close collaboration with experiment (ESR6 and ESR7) on manipulation of electronic structure by application of strain.
Alireza received his BSc (2017) from Azad University, TNB, in the field of Nuclear Physics, and his MSc (2020) from Iran University of Science and Technology in the field of Solid-state Physics.

Wei Li (ESR2, TUD) is pursuing her PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Heine and Dr. Thomas Brumme at TUD. She applies theoretical methods to study the influence of the stacking angles and stacking orders on the structural and electronic properties of 2DS multi-layers. She will be seconded for 3 months at CNRS (Toulouse, France) to work on realistic models for heterostructures, as well as 3 months at SCM (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) to implement pilot codes into ADF/BAND.
Wei received her BSc (2018) from Beihang University in the field of Materials Physics, and her MSc (2021) from Beihang University in the field of Computational Materials Science.

Swaroop Kumar Palai (ESR3, CNRS) is pursuing his PhD research under the supervision of Prof. Paulina Płochocka at CNRS-LNCMI, Toulouse, France. His main objective is to investigate the impact of different combinations of mono-layers with zero twist-angle on the optical properties of heterostructures. This study will be focused on interlayer exciton polarization and understanding the influence of small and large lattice-mismatch on a potential moiré pattern formation and interlayer exciton photophysics. He will be conducting his secondments at CSIC (Spain) for 4 months, where he will learn about the preparation of heterostructures, at TUD (Germany) for 1 month, comparing the experimental data with theory for the twist angle in the heterostructure, and at Nanores (Poland) for 3 months to employ high-quality microscopy to correlate valley polarisation with spatial homogeneity of the heterostructure.
Swaroop did his Masters in Physics from NIT Rourkela, India (2019) in the field of Soft Matter Physics.

Nikodem Sokołowski (ESR4, CNRS) is pursuing his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Paulina Płochocka at CNRS-LNCMI, Toulouse, France. His main objective is to provide control over intralayer and interlayer excitons and their spin and valley polarization in TMD heterostructures (HS) by applying spectroscopy methods combined with an external electrical and magnetic field. Nikodem will be seconded for 4 months at EPFL (Switzerland), for preparing the gated HS, for 1 month at POLIMI (Italy), for measuring of the spin transfer and interlayer exciton formation dynamics in HS, and for 3 months at Neno Vision (Czech Republic), for quality assessment of samples by electron microscopy. His research benefits from close collaboration with the samples preparation group (ESR7) and the gates preparation group (ESR9, ESR10).
Nikodem received his BCs (2020) and MSc (2021) from Wrocław University of Science and Technology (Poland) in the field of Technical Physics with a specialization in Nanotechnology.

Beatriz de Simoni (ESR5, PWR) is pursuing her PhD studies at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland, under the supervision of Prof. Robert Kudrawiec. She studies the optical properties and band structure of van der Waals crystals and heterostructures under axial and hydrostatic pressure. For this, she uses photoluminescence, photoreflectance and other optical methods. She will be seconded for 3 months at Nanores (Poland), for work on the treatment of van der Waals crystals using a focused ion beam, and for 5 months at CSIC (Spain) + CNRS (France) for developing skills associated with the preparation of van der Waals heterostructures and optical measurements at high magnetic fields.
Beatriz obtained her BSc (2017) from the Federal University of Itajub (UNIFEI), Brazil, and her MSc (2020) from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary.

Ozan Yakar (ESR6, AMO) is pursuing his PhD research and studies under the supervision of Prof. Max Lemme at AMO GmbH (RWTH Aachen University). He investigates the effects of strain on CVD grown TMDC. He will be seconded for 6 months at TCD (Ireland) to correlate electrical and Raman strain data with aberration corrected structural characterization of TMDC.
Ozan received his BSc (2017) from Bilkent University, Turkey, in the field of Physics and his MSc (2020), from Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey, in the field of Photonics.

Onur Çakıroğlu (ESR7, CSIC) is pursuing his PhD studies under the supervision of Dr. Andres Castellanos-Gomez and Dr. Riccardo Frisenda at ICMM-UAM (Spain). He applies external electric field and strain to 2D semiconductors, artificial stacks and heterostructures in order to understand their roles in optical properties of these materials. He will be seconded for 3 months at AMO GmbH (Germany) to fabricate devices with local gates and for 3 months at EPFL (Switzerland) to carry out ionic liquid gating measurements.
Onur received his BSc (2016) and MSc (2019) from Bilkent University (Turkey) in the field of Condensed Matter Physics.

Aljoscha Söll (ESR8, VSCHT) is pursuing his PhD studies at VSCHT in Prague under the supervision of Prof. Ing. Zdeněk Sofer, Ph.D.. His main objective is to synthesize and exfoliate various transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) and their solid solutions. Furthermore, he will develop methods for atomic layer deposition of the materials mentioned above and their heterostructures on various substrates. He will spend three months at EPFL (Switzerland), learning to fabricate devices using exfoliated single crystals, and further three months at Neno Vision (Czech Republic), carrying out correlation microscopy of 2D heterostructures and thin films.
Aljoscha received his BSc (2018) for the work on gas phase syntheses of TMDC solid solutions from Leibniz Universit Hannover. He received his MSc (2021) at the same university for the work on colloidal synthesis methods of few-layer TMDC nanosheets.

Asmund Ottesen (ESR9, EPFL) is pursuing his PhD at EPFL, in the Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES), under the supervision of Prof. Andras Kis. In his work, he fabricates and characterises optoelectronic devices based on interlayer excitons in van der Waals heterostructures. During his project he will perform studies of time-resolved exciton diffusion and electron-hole coupling. His planned secondment is at CNRS (Toulouse, France) for exciton lifetime measurements in TMDC and at Oxford Instruments (Bristol, UK) for optical characterisation of large-area films.
Asmund obtained his BSc (2019) and MSc (2021) in Physics and Nanotechnology from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) with a master thesis in 2D Memristors for Neuromorphic Computing.

Edoardo Lopriore (ESR10, EPFL) is pursuing his PhD at EPFL, in the Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES), under Prof. Andras Kis' supervision. He is working on the fabrication and measurement of optoelectronic devices based on interlayer excitons in van der Waals heterostructures. His studies have focused on interlayer exciton transport in hBN-encapsulated MoSe₂/WSe₂ hetero-bilayers with small twist angles in dual-gate devices by performing optical measurements at cryogenic temperatures. His planned secondments are at CSIC (Madrid) for strain engineering performed on the devices of interest and at AMO (Aachen) for the integration of large-area films within the device fabrication process.
Edoardo received his BSc (2018) and MSc (2020) in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa (Italy), with a Master's thesis on computational modeling of excitonic switches and photodetectors based on interlayer exciton transport in van der Waals heterostructures.

Irantzu Landa (ESR11, POLIMI) is pursuing her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Christoph Gadermaier at the Politecnico di Milano. She studies the role of strain, charge density, defects and dielectric environment on the electron dynamics in 2DS, with the aim of controlling the electronic structure of these materials, using femtosecond optical spectroscopy as the main experimental technique. She will be seconded to PWR (Wrocław, Poland) to perform piezo- and electromodulation spectroscopy, and to AMO Gmbh (Aachen, Germany) for the realization and testing of strain-actuated optical modulator devices, performing 3 months in each of the secondments.
Irantzu received her BSc in Physics (2019) from the University of Zaragoza (Spain), and her MSc (2020) from the University of Barcelona in the field of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

Edoardo Spadetto (ESR13, SCM) is pursuing his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Lucas Visscher and Dr. Stan Van Gisbergen at SCM (The Netherlands). He develops DFT and Post-DFT methods to investigate the electronic structure of 1D and 2D materials, and in cooperation with ESR1 he will also investigate 2DS excitation spectra under experimental settings. His course of studies includes a 6 months seconding at TUD (Germany) with the aim to implement TDDFTB and Bethe-Salpether equation for DFTB methods.
Edoardo obtained his BSc (2019) in Physics and his MSc (2021) in Physics of Data from the University of Padova (Italy) merging transversal competencies from Computer Science and Physics of Matter.

Noemi Fabiano (ESR14, TCD) is pursuing her PhD at Trinity College Dublin, under the guidance of Professor Valeria Nicolosi. She is working on the exfoliation of 2D layered materials in order to make inkjet-printed optoelectronic devices. She will be seconded for 3 months at SYNPO (Prague, Czech Republic).
Noemi has received her BSc (2016) in Chemical Sciences and Technologies at University of Milan-Bicocca and her MSc (2019) in Chemical Sciences and Technologies in 2019 at the same university. She has worked for a few months as an intern in Research and Development at Graftonica s.r.l. In her free time, she can be found somewhere reading books or playing guitar.

Ilias Oikonomou (ESR15, TUD/TCD) is pursuing his PhD co-supervised by Prof. Thomas Heine in TU Dresden and Prof. Valeria Nicolosi in Trinity College Dublin. He studies the structure and defects induced in 2D ultrathin layered materials, their heterostructures and devices, combining atom by atom aberration corrected STEM/HRTEM along with modeling through Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations.
Ilias received his Bachelor of Science in Physics (2019) from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for his work in structure of CoxPd1-x thin films with Transmission Electron Microscopy and his Master of Science in Materials Physics and Technology (2021) from the same university, for his work in structural characterization of nanoparticles with biological applications again with TEM/HRTEM techniques.