Jérôme Faist is a Swiss Physicist and professor at the Institute of Quantum Electronics at ETH Zürich, where he also heads the FIRST Center for Micro- and Nanoscience. He studied physics and optoelectronics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, with early research focused on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers and optical modulators.
Following his doctoral studies, Faist conducted postdoctoral research at IBM Rüschlikon and later joined Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, where he worked in Federico Capasso’s group. During this period, he made seminal contributions to intersubband physics and played a central role in the development of the quantum cascade laser (QCL). Together with collaborators, he successfully demonstrated the first experimental QCL using molecular-beam epitaxy, establishing a fundamentally new class of semiconductor lasers whose emission wavelength can be engineered from the mid-infrared to the terahertz range.
Faist later became Full Professor at the University of Neuchâtel, where his research concentrated on mid- and far-infrared intersubband lasers and where he founded the spin-off company Alpes Lasers to commercialize QCL technology for scientific, industrial, and medical applications. At ETH Zürich, his research continues to push the performance of quantum cascade lasers, including frequency-comb operation and room-temperature devices for advanced spectroscopic applications.
Beyond laser technology, Faist is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on light-matter interaction in solid-state systems. His research addresses coherent intersubband transitions in strong magnetic fields, vacuum fluctuations in terahertz metamaterials, and ultra-strong coupling phenomena, providing widely adopted experimental platforms and conceptual frameworks in condensed matter physics and material science.
His contributions have been recognized by numerous awards, including the National Swiss Latsis Prize. Jérôme Faist is an IEEE Member and an Optical Society of America Fellow and is the author of the monograph Quantum Cascade Lasers (Oxford University Press). His work has had a lasting impact on infrared photonics, spectroscopy, and the control of quantum states in solid-state systems.
