I'm a partner in a small furniture family business. A few years ago, I had solar panels installed on the roof of the building that we use as factory and warehouse. It was a big investment, but now I save a lot of money when it comes to paying my company's electricity bills. Plus, a choice like this is beneficial to the planet, too!

I've loved cinema since I was a child, but I decided that would be my life when I saw my first 3D movie. The possibility of seeing the depth of the scenes on the screen seemed like magic to me. But, as is often the case in cinema, it’s just a special effect! The glasses with polarizing lenses that are given at the entrance, select different photons that come from the projectors, bringing to our eyes two slightly different images that our brain combines creating the feeling of three-dimensionality.

Living in a mountain village with few shops, I usually buy everything I need online. However, there are many people in the village, including my grandmother, who would rather spend more than one hour in the car to the nearest city than leave their data on the internet, because they are afraid of cyberattacks.

Although this is a serious danger, I’m not worried, because I read that there are also many people who are studying new ways to improve the security of our communications, and it seems that the most promising techniques have to do with the exotic properties of quantum physics!

For a blood test, we have usually to go somewhere where they fill several tubes with our blood and we then have to wait a few days for the results. Thanks to the effective interaction between photons and gold nanoparticles, a blood analysis laboratory can fit inside a chip of a few centimeters that allows us to obtain the results in just 10 minutes from a single drop of blood.

This technology developed by Droplite (an ICFO spin-off company born in 2018) is currently validated to detect hormones linked to the reproductive cycle, allergies, antibodies for some veterinary or human diseases (such as malaria and COVID-19), but it has many other potential applications.

Photo: Prototype by Droplite

Graphene is the first 2D material to be manufactured in the world. Despite being only one atom thick, graphene is stable and surprisingly strong. Its physical properties make of it an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, as well as being flexible, extensible and transparent. All these characteristics make graphene a very interesting material for the development of new technologies.

Institutions are aware of the potential of this material and have created the Graphene Flagship (at the European level) and GraphCAT (at the local level) to accelerate research on this material and bring its benefits to society. ICFO employs some of the world's leading experts in the field of graphene, participating in many of the projects of these two networks.

Photo: Graphene-based broadband camera designed by an ICFO team

Some organisms can transform sunlight into the energy they need to live with photosynthesis. This process, resulting of millions of years of evolution, is incredibly efficient: they can transform 95% of the light that reaches them into energy. In contrast, the best solar commercial panels today translate only 20% of energy into electricity.

At ICFO, we use ultrafast laser pulses to "photograph" the molecules responsible for capturing light energy found in photosynthetic organisms in order to better understand this process and improve the efficiency of solar panels.

Photo: Experimental setup to study some of the relevant molecules for photosynthesis

ICFO encourages society to be part of the scientific community through rigorous scientific experiments that require citizen participation, making society aware of the importance of science in an attractive way, and enabling everyone to significantly contribute to scientific research.

In recent years, ICFO has coordinated various citizen science experiments, such as the BIG Bell Test, involving more than 100,000 citizens in a series of cutting-edge quantum physics experiments conducted in 12 leading laboratories around the world. It also organized NightUp Castelldefels, a pilot experiment to test whether we can use the sensors in mobile phones to gather useful data for studies on light pollution.

Photo: Citizens participating in NightUp Castelldefels.

Having a basic knowledge of different scientific fields and understand how scientific knowledge is generated is important for all citizens. The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of this: it is easier to accept and correctly apply public health recommendations (and help curb the spread of the virus) if we understand the scientific reasons behind them and how policy makers got to these conclusions.

Even if everyone learns science during compulsory education, it is clearly not enough for society to value science and its results: how can we change that?

A priori, knowledge is not negative: it is the use that people make of it that sometimes creates negative consequences. We know that scientific advances in recent years have brought immense benefits, but also new ways of attacking the security and freedom of people.

Is it necessary to investigate everything, knowing that in some cases misused knowledge can lead to dangers?

The pandemic that arose in 2020 taught us that public health is an important sector that affects many more aspects of society. A tiny virus can affect the lives of millions of people in all its aspects, not only health, but also the economy, industrial structure, labor market ...

That’s why it’s important to focus most of our efforts on research projects that can improve and care for people’s health.

We live in the information age. More and more companies and institutions are collecting and analyzing large amounts of data to improve industrial processes and services for the population. In addition, digital technologies are essential to communicate with each other, whether for work or fun. If information systems fail, strategic structures such as energy networks, traffic control, hospitals, governments, etc. fail, too. Thus, ensuring data security for quick and massive data transfer is of fundamental importance for a digitized society like ours.

That is why it is important to focus most of our efforts on research projects that can improve data collection, analysis, transmission and security.

We are in the middle of a climate emergency: to be able to solve it we need new environmental policies and the commitment of society as a whole. Science and technology can accelerate the change of paradigm that we need to save the planet with discoveries and innovative technologies. If we do nothing now, the Earth will be uninhabitable and unsustainable, but there’s still time.

That’s why it’s important to focus most of our efforts on research projects that can help us take care of our planet.

Photonics is everywhere and has a positive impact in many different aspects of our lives. Sometimes, the same technology (such as the laser) can improve health, information and care for the environment at the same time. There are many global issues and it is difficult to set a priority, especially because they are interconnected.

That’s why it’s important not to focus our efforts on a single field of application: it’s better to diversify our efforts to have more chances of success.