People
Principal Investigator
Can Onur Avci
Dr. Can Onur Avci is a tenured scientist at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC). He received his Ph.D. degree from ETH Zürich in 2015 and was awarded the ETH Medal for outstanding doctoral thesis. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 2016-2018 and at ETH Zürich between 2018 and 2021, before joining ICMAB.CSIC. His expertise encompasses spin currents and spin-orbit-driven transport phenomena in layered heterostructures, electrical control of magnetization, and spintronic memory and logic devices.
Postdocs
Mustafa Erkovan
Mustafa Erkovan joined ICMAB-CSIC in October 2024 as a postdoctoral researcher on the CONVERT project. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Gebze Technical University, Turkey, in 2011, followed by a postdoctoral position at Freie Universität Berlin from 2011 to 2013. From 2013 to 2019, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at Sakarya University, Turkey. In 2019, he joined INESC-MN in Portugal as a senior researcher, a role he held until 2023, alongside serving as an invited assistant professor at Instituto Superior Técnico. His research focuses on advanced materials and devices, particularly Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) sensors. Currently, in his postdoctoral role at ICMAB, he is dedicated to developing spintronic devices utilizing insulating ferrimagnetic materials.
Takayuki Shiino
Takayuki Shiino joined ICMAB-CSIC and the MAGNEPIC project as a postdoctoral researcher in March 2024. He received his BSc in Physics (2013) and MSc in Materials Science and Engineering (2016) from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) and KAIST (South Korea), respectively. He received his Ph.D. from Nagoya University (Japan) in 2019 with a thesis on a quantum critical phenomenon in heavy-fermion materials. After the PhD, he experienced two postdoctoral researches: Uppsala University (2019 - 2021, Sweden) and KAIST (2022 - 2024, South Korea) for the studies of quasicrystals and spintronics, respectively. His current postdoctoral research focuses on spintronic devices with insulating ferrimagnetic materials.
Weronika Janus
Weronika Janus joined ICMAB-CSIC and SMARTSPIN project as a Postdoc researcher in November 2023. She studied at AGH University of Krakow, Poland, where she obtained her BSc in Biomedical Engineering (2018), MSc in Biomedical Engineering - Bionanotechnology (2019), and she started her PhD in Physics (2019). During her PhD, she focused on the strain manipulation of magnetic properties in antiferromagnetic thin films. Her current research interest is in developing innovative magnetic insulator-based spintronic memory devices, where the information can be written and read by all-electrical means
Silvia Damerio
Silvia Damerio joined ICMAB-CSIC and the MAGNEPIC project as a Post-doc researcher in February 2022. She obtained her BSc. (Hons - 2015) and MSc. (Hons - 2017) in Chemistry from the University of Genova (Italy) and University of Groningen (The Netherlands), respectively. She subsequently joined the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen for her PhD, which she received in 2022 with a thesis about modulated phases in ferroic oxides. She recently received a grant of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions to investigate dynamical spintronic devices and continue her research at ICMAB.
PhD Students
Teodor Apetrei
Teodor Apetrei joined ICMAB-CSIC and the MUST project as a PhD student in November 2023. He obtained his BSc. degree in Computational Physics at University Alexandru Ioan Cuza Iasi (Romania, 2020) and his MSc. degree in Applied and Engineering Physics at Technische Universitat Munchen (Germany, 2023). The main focus of his current research is the growth and engineering of magnetic oxide and nitride thin films by magnetron sputtering with tunable interfacial chiralic magnetism and perpendicular anisotropy.
Stefano Fedel
Stefano Fedel joined ICMAB-CSIC and the MAGNEPIC project as a PhD student in September 2021. He studied Engineering Physics at Politecnico di Milano (Italy), where he obtained his BSc. in 2018 and MSc. in 2021. He spent one year as an exchange student at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) between 2019 and 2020. Afterward, he carried out his master thesis at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), where he focused on the characterization of spin-orbit torques at the interface between topological insulators and ferromagnet. Stefano's project deals with the current-driven dynamics of magnetization in magnetic insulators detected by MOKE microscopy.
Matteo Fettizio
Matteo Fettizio joined ICMAB-CSIC and the MAGNEPIC project as a PhD student in March 2023 after obtaining his BSc. and MSc. degrees in Electronics Engineering at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). The main focus of his research is on the voltage induced control of magnetic anisotropy in thin films of ferrimagnetic garnets for spintronics applications.
MSc. and BSc. Students
Alumni
Emma Sánchez Villegas
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
BSc. student
02/2024 - 07/2024
Luis Martinez Armesto
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
MSc. student
10/2023 - 07/2024
Dr. Jesús Alejandro De Sousa
Postdoc 04/2023-08/2024
Dr. Martín Testa Anta
PhD 03/2021 - 12/2022
Postdoc 01/2023 - 04/2023
Dr. Mustafa Öztürk
(Gebze Technical University, Turkey)
Erasmus Staff Exchange Programme
11/2022
Leo Rol
(ESPCI Paris - PSL, France)
Internship student
05/2023 - 08/2023
Loes Fransen
(TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
MSc. Internship student
09/2022 - 02/2023
Julia Mateu Comas
(Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)
BSc. student
09/2022 - 01/2023
Iker Barragán Martin
(Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)
BSc. student
09/2022 - 12/2022
Leo Salgado Chane-Pane
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
MSc. student
11/2021 - 08/2022
Teodor Parella Dilmé
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
BSc. student
10/2021 - 06/2022