"I am especially attracted to the exploration of other unknown matter situations"

2014/07/01 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Elkarrizketak
• Nanoteknologia

In reality, what has fascinated me most has been that we have realized that we have the capacity to design or control matter to the extreme. It is not able to understand what happens in our environment, but to control and create materials, molecules, specifically, with the functionalities that we want. Furthermore, the design is not based on trial and error, but is designed from the theory of quantum mechanics. That is, we have enormously powerful tools to achieve our goals.

When you are a student it seems that everything is developed and that the only thing that is done is to apply what is already known. That doesn't satisfy you, because if so, what do you have to innovate? Because innovation can be in the end result or what you get along the way. And what interests me most is what you get along the way. The end result is also interesting, because it is what can most influence society, but from the intellectual point of view I excites the way. In fact, although theories developed long ago, their applicability on complex issues did not. In fact, this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded precisely for this reason: for combining different theoretical methods, to achieve a very powerful tool. I mean something that affects me directly. They have used it to design medicines and we work to reach the same level, in materials and in nanoscience.

However, this is at the application level, the most important thing is that they have realized the possibilities offered when adding complexity to the theories we know.

In the medium term I will say what I want now. And it's related to the range of opportunities I just mentioned. We are used to materials in balance with the environment that endure in time. But from the formal point of view, what we see is only a very small part of what can exist. And precisely that is what attracts me: to explore situations of matter that we now do not have at hand.

We can compare what happens in astrophysics: astrophysicists know that what they see is only part of what is there. The same thing happens with the states and systems of matter, and I want to explore those we do not know, discover what characteristics they can have and know how to reach them.

I think by combining different techniques (biochemistry, quantum computing...) we can reach these situations. That is, it can be achieved by working on the interface between different disciplines, which makes it very attractive.