Gianluca Boso
Contacts Email: gianluca.boso@polimi.it Address: Via Inama, 17 Phone (mob): +39 333 6746146 20133 - Milano (MI) ITALY
Personal Info Nationality: Italian
Education Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Ph.D. Information Technology. (January 2011 – December 2013). Major research topic: “Single-photon counting instrumentation for gated-mode detection” c/o SPADlab.
M.Sc. Electronics Engineering, December 2010. Final Grade: 110/110. Thesis: “Module for functional brain spectroscopy using fast-gated single-photon avalanche diodes” founded by the European Union project FP7 nEUROPT c/o SPADlab.
B.Sc. Electronics Engineering, March 2008. Final Grade: 109/110. Thesis: “Development and construction of an electromagnetic kicking system” c/o AiRLab. Mahindra United World College, India
International Baccalaureate Diploma, May 2004. Final Grade: 38/42. Diploma awarded by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) in Geneve, Switzerland.
Experience SPADlab, Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Sept 2009 – Dec 2013 Advisors: Prof. Alberto Tosi (alberto.tosi@polimi.it) and Prof. Franco Zappa (franco.zappa@polimi.it).
Ph.D. Research Project and M.Sc. Thesis Project.
TIME-RESOLVED OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY
Design and characterization of electronic instruments for single-photon counting in gated-mode regime including a fast-gated module, a dual gate photon counter, a wide band programmable delayer and a compact spectroscopic probe to be used with Silicon single-photon avalanche diodes and multimode VCSEL diodes.
Instrument development both on the detector and source side, including RF/mixed-signal design and layout, microcontroller/CPLD/FPGA firmware development, simulation and design of the optical system, optical and electrical characterization of the instruments. Participated in various collaborations with international research institutes working on functional brain imaging, STED microscopy, luminescence of quantum dots, time-resolved diffuse optical tomography etc.
SINGLE-PHOTON DEVICE CHARACTERIZATION
Performed measurements on single-photon detectors and laser sources like quantum efficiency, timing resolution and afterpulsing measurement of CMOS SPADs and arrays and time-resolved characterization of multimode VCSELs diodes: prepared the automated measurement setup with LabView operated lab instruments (e.g. pulse generators, counters, pulsed lasers etc.) and written various MatLab scripts for post-processing the acquired data like curve fitting, carrier time constant extraction etc.
GIGAHERTZ SINE-GATING OF SINGLE-PHOTON AVALANCHE DIODES
Design and characterization of a setup to gate a single-photon avalanche diode in sine-wave regime. Designed the entire RF gating and acquisition chain (wideband amplifiers, front-end, bandpass and notch filters etc.) and the optical setup to characterize a Silicon and an InGaAs/InP device in terms of quantum efficiency, timing resolution, dark counts, maximum count rate etc
STAYS IN OTHER RESEARCH CENTERS AND UNIVERSITIES:
- May 2011: University of Konstanz (Konstanz, Germany) - July 2011: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (Montreal, Canada)
- January 2012: Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt – PTB (Berlin, Germany) - January 2013: Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt – PTB (Berlin, Germany) - May 2013: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia – IIT (Genoa, Italy)
AiRLab (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Lab), Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Mar 2007 – Mar 2008
Advisor Prof. Andrea Bonarini (andrea.bonarini@polimi.it).
B.Sc. Thesis Project.
Developed an innovative kicking system for the Milan Robocup robot team. The kicking system includes a 400 V - 100 A pulsed electromagnetic solenoid actuator, its mechanical assembly, a controlled boost converter 24V to 400V and a PIC powered control board enabling communication with the robot main processing unit.
XTEAM (eXtreme Technology for Enhanced Automotive Manufactoring), Fondazione Politecnico di Milano Italy, Dec 2006 – Dec 2008
Tutor: Ing. Paolo Magni (paolo.magni@fondazione.polimi.it).
Junior Electronic Systems Designer.
Assisted the development and testing of the electronic equipment (telemetry and ECU) of a car prototype participating to the Shell Eco Marathon Europe competition. Our team won in May 2007 the Bosch Technology Award.
Courses LabView 2013 Core 1 and Core 2 training, NI Italy Training Center, 11-15 Nov 2013.
BEST Autumn Course on Electric Power Generation, Kosice Technical University, Slovakia, 28 Sept - 6 Oct 2008. Sponsored by ENEL (Italian Energy Company). Won the Best Student Award.
Teaching Activity Tutoring in “Microcontroller System Design” for M.Sc. and Ph.D. students in Electronics Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, 60 hrs per year in 2011, 2012, 2013.
Teaching “Microcontrollers: Hardware, Firmware and Software Design” for Ph.D. students in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, 20 hrs per year in 2011, 2012, 2013.
Tutoring in “SPICE Electronic Design” for M.Sc. students in Electronics Engineering, Politecnico di Milano Italy, 60 hrs in 2013.
Software Skills PCB Design. Mentor Graphics PADS, Cadence OrCAD PCB Designer, Altium Designer.
System Level Design. Mathworks MatLab (including Simulink), NI LabView.
FEM Simulators. FEMM (LUA scripting), Ansoft Maxwell 2D, COMSOL Multiphysics
Optical System Design. Radiant Zemax.
Programming Languages and Digital Design. C language, PIC and dsPIC programming in C (MPLAB IDE, HiTech PICC, MikroC, CCS), PIC Simulator IDE, LabCenter Electronics Proteus VSM.
Document Design. Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office Suite, Lyx/LaTex.
Unix-Like OS. Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo GNU-Linux Distributions, FreeBSD (basic knowledge), Linux server basic setup (Apache, ssl, ssh).
Technical Skills RF and Mixed Signal Circuit Design. Development, prototyping and testing of high performance RF and mixed signal boards including simulation (transmission line modeling, IBIS modeling, FEM), layout, thermal simulation and management, firmware development (C and assembly) and VHDL programming (basic knowledge).
Data Analysis. Experience with Matlab, Simulink and LabView for the automated acquisition of data from instrumentation and post-processing like data fitting, signal filtering, image processing, model verification with real data etc.
Electronics laboratory equipment. Use of wideband real-time and sampling digital oscilloscopes, vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, DMMs, arbitrary function
generators, picosecond pulse generators, counters, semiconductor parameter analyzers etc
Equipment for optical and TCSPC measurements. Use of CW and pulsed laser sources (visible and NIR up to 1550 μm), single-photon detectors, TCSPC timing electronics, optomechanical assemblies (spectrometers, microscopes, cage systems etc), power meters, etc.
Language Skills Italian. Mother tongue.
English. Reading: Excellent, Writing: Excellent, Speaking: Excellent. High school diploma awarded in English, TOEFL CBT score: 287/300.
Spanish. Reading: Good, Writing: Basic, Speaking: Basic. Taken as Ab Initio language for the International Baccalaureate Diploma, final grade: 7/7.
Additional IEEE Graduate Student Member. Since March 2008 I am an IEEE Graduate Student Member and active member of Politecnico di Milano Student Branch.
Saxophone Player. Classical, Swing/Big Band, Jazz. Been 2nd Tenor Saxophone at the "Filarmonica Città di Sacile" Big Band.
Emergency Care Assistant. Certified Emergency Care Assistant with both BLS (Basic Life Support) and AED (Automated External Defibrillator) capabilities.
List of publications
INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS
1. A. Tosi, C. Scarcella, G. Boso, F. Acerbi, “Gate-free InGaAs/InP single-photon detector working at up
to 100 Mcount/s,” IEEE Photonics Journal, vol. 5, no. 4 (2013).
2. A. Puszka, L. Di Sieno, A. Dalla Mora, A. Pifferi, D. Contini, G. Boso, A. Tosi, L. Hervé, A. Planat-Chrétien, A. Koenig, J.M. Dinten, “Time-resolved diffuse optical tomography using fast-gated single-photon avalanche diodes,” Biomedical Optics Express, vol. 4, no. 8, 1351 - 1365 (2013).
3. G. Boso, A. Dalla Mora, A. Della Frera, A. Tosi, "Fast-gating of single-photon avalanche diodes with 200 ps transitions and 30 ps timing jitter," Sensors and Actuators A: Physical 191, 61–67 (2013).
4. G. Boso, A. Tosi, A. Dalla Mora, F. Zappa, “High-throughput gated photon counter with two detection
windows programmable down to 70 ps width,” Review of Scientific Instruments (IN PRESS).
5. M. Mazurenka, L. Di Sieno, G. Boso, D. Contini, A. Pifferi, A. Dalla Mora, A. Tosi, H. Wabnitz, R. Macdonald, “Non-contact in vivo diffuse optical imaging using a time-gated scanning system,” Biomedical Optics Express,vol. 4, no. 10, 2257-2268 (2013).
6. F. Villa, D. Bronzi, Y. Zou, C. Scarcella, G. Boso, S. Tisa, A. Tosi, F. Zappa, D. Durini, S. Weyers, U. Pashen, W. Brockherde, “CMOS SPADs with up to 500 um diameter and 55% detection efficiency at 420 nm,” Journal of Modern Optics (IN PRESS).
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES
7. L. Di Sieno, D. Contini, A. Dalla Mora, A. Torricelli, L. Spinelli, R. Cubeddu, A. Tosi, G. Boso, A. Pifferi, “Functional near-infrared spectroscopy at small source-detector distance by means of high dynamic-range fast-gated SPAD acquisitions: first in-vivo measurements,” SPIE ECBO, Proc. of SPIE 8804, Munich, Germany (2013).
8. M. Mazurenka, L. Di Sieno, G. Boso, D. Contini, A. Pifferi, A. Dalla Mora, A. Tosi, H. Wabnitz, R. Macdonald, “A non-contact time-domain scanning brain imaging system: first in-vivo results,” SPIE ECBO, Proc. of SPIE 8799, Munich, Germany (2013).
9. A. Puszka, L. Di Sieno, A. Dalla Mora, A. Pifferi, D. Contini, G. Boso, A. Tosi, A. Planat-Chrétien, L. Hervé, A. Koenig, J. Dinten, “Experimental results on time-resolved reflectance diffuse optical tomography with fast-gated SPADs,” SPIE ECBO, Proc. of SPIE 8799, Munich, Germany (2013). 10. D. Contini, A. Dalla Mora, L. Di Sieno, R. Cubeddu, A. Tosi, G. Boso, A. Pifferi, “Memory effect in
gated single-photon avalanche diodes: a limiting noise contribution similar to afterpulsing,” SPIE Photonics West, Proc. of SPIE 8619, San Francisco, CA, USA (2013).
11. M. Mazurenka, L. Di Sieno, G. Boso, D. Contini, A. Pifferi, A. Dalla Mora, A. Tosi, H. Wabnitz, R. Macdonald, “A non-contact fNIRS scanner: First in-vivo tests”, Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference, London, England (2012).
12. D. Contini, A. Dalla Mora, L. Di Sieno, A. Torricelli, L. Spinelli, R. Cubeddu, A. Tosi, G. Boso, A. Pifferi, “Time resolved functional near infrared spectroscopy by means of time gated system at small interfiber distance”, Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference, London, England (2012). 13. F. Villa, D. Bronzi, S. Bellisai, G. Boso, A. Bahgat Shehata, C. Scarcella, A. Tosi, et al. “SPAD
imagers for remote sensing at the single-photon level”, SPIE Security + Defence, paper 8542A-17, Edinburgh, Scotland (2012).
14. D. Bronzi, F. Villa, S. Bellisai,B. Markovic, G. Boso, C. Scarcella, A. Della Frera, A. Tosi, “CMOS
SPAD Pixels for Indirect Time-Of-Flight Ranging Sensors,” IEEE Photonics Conference, art. no. 6358469 , pp. 22-23, Burlingame, CA, USA (2012).
15. F. Villa, B. Markovic, D. Bronzi, S. Bellisai, G. Boso, C.Scarcella, A. Tosi, D. Durini, et al., “SPAD
detector for long-distance 3D ranging with sub-nanosecond TDC,” IEEE Photonics Conference, art. no. 6358470 , pp. 24-25 - Burlingame, CA, USA (2012).
16. B. Markovic, F. Villa, S. Bellisai, D. Bronzi, C. Scarcella, G. Boso, et al., “A compact Time-to-Digital
Converter (TDC) Module with 10 ps resolution and less than 1.5% LSB DNL”, IEEE Photonics Conference, art. no. 6358471 , pp. 26-27 - Burlingame, CA, USA (2012).
17. G. Boso, A. Dalla Mora, A. Tosi, A. Della Frera, F. Zappa, “Fast-gated single-photon detection
module with 200 ps transitions running up to 50 MHz with 30 ps resolution,” SPIE Photonics West, Proc. of SPIE 8268, San Francisco, CA, USA (2012).
18. G. Boso, A. Dalla Mora, A. Tosi, A. Pifferi, D. Contini, “Fast-gated single-photon detector module for
wide dynamic range optical measurements,” 7th Conference on Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME), art. no. 5966245, pp. 173-176, Trento, Italy (2011).
NATIONAL CONFERENCES
19. L. Di Sieno, A. Pifferi, A. Dalla Mora, D. Contini, G. Boso, A. Tosi, M. Mazurenka, H. Wabnitz, R. Macdonald, “Time-resolved diffuse optical spectroscopy by means of reflectance scanning imaging system: first in vivo tests,” 15° Convegno Nazionale delle Tecnologie Fotoniche, Milano, Italy (2013). 20. A. Dalla Mora, D. Contini, A. Pifferi, L. Spinelli, A. Torricelli, R. Cubeddu, A. Tosi, G. Boso, F. Zappa, “Ultra-wide dynamic range optical measurements by means of fast-gated single-photon avalanche diode”, 14° Convegno Nazionale delle Tecnologie Fotoniche, Firenze, Italy (2012).
