Creating new materials

© Marcel Benoist Foundation / Daniel Rihs

With her award-winning multiferroic research, Dr Nicola Spaldin, Professor of Materials Theory at ETH Zurich, has laid the foundations for a new technology that enables ultrafast and energy-efficient data storage.

Thanks to her pioneering work, electronic devices could be developed in future with a completely new architecture and greater energy efficiency. Potential applications include ultrafast computers, tiny data storage devices and medical precision measurements. Nicola Spaldin moved from the University of California in Santa Barbara to ETH in 2010. In 2012, she received the Rössler Prize, an award for promising young scientists in the expansion phase of their research careers. Worth 200,000 Swiss francs in research funding, it is ETH’s most generous research award and is made possible by a donation from ETH alumnus Dr Max Rössler.