Isabelle Staude


Isabelle Philippa Staude, is a German photonics researcher and Professor at the Friedrich Schiller Universitaet, Jena. Her research involves the creation of plasmonic nanostructures and metamaterials for the dynamic manipulation of light.

Early life and education

Staude was born in Germany. She was an undergraduate student in physics at the University of Konstanz. She moved to Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for her doctoral research, where she studied photonic band gap materials. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University, where she started working on optical nanoantennas and plasmonic structures. She was Deputy Leader of the Australian Research Council centre CUDOS.

Research and career

Staude joined the Abbe Center of Photonics at the Friedrich Schiller Universitaet, Jena in 2015. Her early work considered functional photonic nanostructures, and was supported by an Emmy Noetherfellowship. She was made a professor in Photonic Nanomaterials in 2020.
Staude is interested in optically resonant dielectric metasurfaces, which can be used to manipulate the nanoscale properties of light. Metasurfaces were originally proposed as passive structures, but dieletric meta surfaces can be used for dynamic control of light, nonlinear optics and emission.
She has created tunable metadevices that can modulate transmittance electrically, which can be used to make more efficient and sustainable displays. In 2021 she started working alongside ANU on the development of holographic mobile phone displays.

Awards and honours

Select publications

*