I don’t know how I would do it without the internet: all the music I listen to, the stories I read, the photos I share with friends, the videos I watch, … everything is in the cloud!

Did you know that the cloud is not as ethereal as its name suggests?

To distribute information  in an ultrafast way around the world, we need an optical fiber network that physically connects all continents and cities, running even on the ocean floor. In this way, the enormous amount of data that is sent every second can reach our devices in no time, be it the data needed to run a hospital or a video of kittens, and all transported by photons!

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 am a high school physics teacher and to motivate my students I always try to connect the concepts I explain with things from everyday life.

The Sars-CoV-2 pandemic has made it easy for me to explain infrared radiation, as we find devices in many places that measure temperature quickly and remotely. These thermometers are photon sensors that capture the infrared radiation emitted by our bodies. Also UVC ultraviolet light can be useful to disinfect, because it can destroy eventual pathogens.

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

If we split the diameter of a hair into a thousand parts, we would get to the scale of the nanoparticles that are made in ICFO. Despite being so small, these particles are useful for different innovative technologies.

At ICFO, many people are exploring the nanoworld, trying to improve our knowledge of the new phenomena that emerge at this tiny scale. They also aim to develop new technologies, such as new materials for mobile phones and wearable devices, diagnostics and treatment of diseases, sensors of photons and solar cells.

Photo: Carbon structure seen with an electron microscope. Some nanotubes can be seen inside the "cave".

Sunlight is a free and inexhaustible source of energy that we must learn to use efficiently, especially in the current context of climate emergency.

At ICFO, several people are studying new materials to create transparent and/or flexible solar cells that would allow us to obtain energy from places that currently aren’t used for the generation of energy. For example, they could be integrated into electric cars to increase their autonomy or into the windows of buildings to maximize the surface area of sunlight capture and therefore energy production. They could also be integrated into clothing or wearable devices, reducing the size of batteries and therefore of the object.

Photo: The square of different color on the O of the ICFO logo is a transparent solar cell

The small changes that light undergoes when crossing different materials can help us measure with high accuracy many characteristics of the world around us, such as distance and temperature.

At ICFO we work to obtain very resistant sensors to measure temperature and electric fields in extreme conditions, such as a fire.

We also investigate how to build ultra-sensitive sensors thanks to the properties of quantum physics, such as a scale that can detect the presence of just one atom with carbon nanotubes or cold atoms that could measure the small magnetic fields generated by our brain.

Photo: Prototype of an ultrasensitive quantum magnetic field sensor.

Science is an international activity: the vast majority of scientific discoveries are made by multinational teams and result from collaborations between institutes and companies in different countries.

People in the world of science often move to expand their experience, so it is very common to find people from different countries in a research center. The cultural mix creates an open and tolerant environment that helps the creation of new and original ideas that allow research advancement.

So does it make sense to associate an important scientific discovery with a country, as we can often read in the news?

During the Cold War years, most of the discoveries made in the Soviet countries were published in Russian and therefore were not easily accessible at the global level. It is evident that clear and effective communication is at the heart of scientific progress.

Today, English is widely used as a common language. Scientists who do not speak well English, may be in disadvantage, because it is harder for them to express themselves correctly and to disseminate their ideas and results than for their English native-speaker colleagues. How can we ensure equal opportunities independently of the native language of scientists, while maintaining a common language that allows for quick and effective communication within the science community?

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.