Speaker
Dr.
Xavi Marti
(Chief Technological Officer IGSresearch | Permanent researcher at Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Description
Magnets Solve Problems
by Xavier Marti
I spent my Phd trying to improve magnetic memories but I never had a chance to actually touch one – even less to “control it with electric fields”. Nevertheless, I collected enough academic merits as to receive a post-doc invitation to University of California, Berkeley, where things did not massively improve. At this stage, I realized that if I wanted to build complete objects using “spintronics”, I'd need to take a parallel road. Then, I became co-owner of IGSresearch.
Leading the design of devices based on simple -simple!- applications of spintronics has really changed my life and, yet, improved by academic CV as well. Our company has lead the production of simple anisotropic magnetoresistive devices used to accurately manage outdoor parkings in smart cities.(This product has now become E.ON's primary product for smart parking being distributed among 11 countries in EU; likewise, Telefonica is deploying Spinwire in South America; we are now literally sweating to get those operating in Middle East).
Many of academic colleagues greet me by saying “so you finally left Science!” or, sometimes the most urgent question referring Spinwire is “Did you actually fabricate each one of the nanometric bars inside it?”. Those sentences truly surprise me. Honestly, I have never before used as much the “scientific method” as I do nowadays. How would you call then devices involved in unprecedented geological monitoring or everyday evolving anti-terrorism security that we are equally working on?
I spent a great amount of my time thinking about the so-called “technology transfer” and what could do our nation to turn all this “excellence” into a “sustainable economy”. I will talk about that too.
Xavi
Primary author
Dr.
Xavi Marti
(Chief Technological Officer IGSresearch | Permanent researcher at Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Co-author
Dr.
Ignasi Fina
(Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC))