The Secretary of State for R&D+i, Carmen Vela, chaired the kickoff meeting of the new Severo Ochoa and Maria Maeztu Alliance of Excellence. The alliance’s target is to internationally promote and strengthen the centres and units accredited with this distinction, to give their research a higher profile.

NanoGUNE researchers have developed a photovoltaic device that is 14% more efficient thanks to the magnetism of its contacts. The device is also capable of providing alternating current directly.

The new headquarters of the first start-up company founded by nanoGUNE in April 2010 in a joint venture with a group of private investors, has been inaugurated by the Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu. The new facilities of the company occupy an area of ​​600 square meters and are located in the Scientific and Technological Park of Gipuzkoa.

Ikerbasque Professor Luis Hueso, accompanied by the Director General of nanoGUNE, José M. Pitarke, has collected the distinction Maria de Maeztu for research excellence on behalf of the Basque research center in nanoscience. This distinction will bring nanoGUNE a financial envelope of 500,000 euros per year for four years.

With the co-authorship of nanoGUNE’s Nanomagnetism group leaders Dr. Andreas Berger and Dr. Paolo Vavassori, the Journal of Physics D – Applied Physics just published the 2017 Magnetism Roadmap. As a whole, the 2017 Magnetism Roadmap, which is an Open Access article, is intended to act as a reference point and guideline for emerging research directions in modern magnetism.

The Nanobiomechanics group of CIC nanoGUNE takes San Sebastian to the cover of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. The picture introduces a research that infers the size of animals dating back 100-350 million years ago from resurrected proteins.

Eduard Carbonell, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the nanoimaging Group at CIC nanoGUNE, received his PhD at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) after the defense of his thesis project on 28 July 2017. His research work, entitled “Electronic tailoring of graphene nanostructures via on-surface synthesis", has been developed under the supervision of Dr. José Ignacio Pascual, nanoimaging group leader.

Iban Amenabar, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE, received his PhD at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) after the defense of his thesis project on 12 July 2017. His research work, entitled “ Infrared nanospectroscopy and hyperspectral nanoimaging of organic matter", has been developed under the supervision of Dr. Rainer Hillenbrand, Nanootpics group leader.

The prestigious journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology has published a piece of research conducted by CIC nanoGUNE researchers. They have experimentally reconstructed titin fragments from their common ancestors and measured their mechanochemical properties. They have discovered a correlation between the properties of the protein measured on a nanoscale and animal size.

A tremendously thin layer of wolfram and tellurium has turned out to be an exotic type of material that physicists have dubbed a ‘topological insulator’. NanoGUNE has participated in the study published in Nature Physics. The physical properties of this two-dimensional material confers it a promising future in the emerging field of spintronics.