ICREA Research Professor and ICN2 Group Leader Clivia Marfa Sotomayor Torres becomes a member of Academia Europaea

by Joana Pi Suñer

This year, ICREA Research Professor and ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group Leader Clivia Marfa Sotomayor Torres was elected member of the Academia Europaea. This organization brings together eminent European scientists and scholars from the full range of Academic disciplines for the growth of scientific knowledge and education.

Founded in 1988, the European Academia is the only Europe-wide academy made up of individual scientists, and scholars, rather than institutions. The principal purposes of Academia Europaea are to express ideas and opinions of scientists from Europe and act as coordinator of European interests in national research agencies. By invitation only, members are elected following exhaustive peer review and scrutiny. Active membership currently stands around 4500, including leading experts from physical sciences and technology, biological science and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics, and the law. Between them, there are 74 Nobel Laureates.

The non-profit organization exists to promote excellence in all branches of scholarly and scientific knowledge. This year, ICREA Research Professor and ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group Leader Clivia Marfa Sotomayor Torres was invited to be a member of this very selected club. Together with ICN2 Director Pablo Ordejón who joined in 2017, she joins the Physics and Engineering Section along with just fewer than 200 Spanish researchers.

Prof. Sotomayor has won this year the ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grant to reduce energy use in information technology. This grant is aimed to head a five-year project in which the interconnect energy-consumption challenge using an innovative approach will be investigated. Named LEIT, from “Lossless information for emerging information technologies”, this project will develop structures that allow taking advantage of phonon properties to transmit information using small amounts of energy.

She is the author of over 500 technical papers and has coedited 6 books. She has led several European projects and one Spanish CONSOLIDER project. Recently she coordinated the H2020 FET Open project PhENOMEN, which successfully demonstrated phonon circuits for communication technologies. Several of her postdoctoral researchers have pursued academic careers.

To more information, visit Clivia’s page on the Academia Europaea website.