Pablo Jarillo, award-winning renowned physicist, has assured in the ‘Casino de Agricultura’ that Valencia has the potential to be a leader in science and advanced technology if the public and private sectors support it.

The Valencian Pablo Jarillo Herrero has been a prophet in his own land and, taking advantage of the fact that he was coming for Christmas, he has been the protagonist of the Round Table organised by the Science Club of the Casino de Agricultura in his honour. Hosted by Antonio Rivera, winner of the Prisma 2020 award for best radio programme for his podcasts ‘A ciencia cierta’ and ‘El oscilador armónico’, the talk was also attended by Valencian physicists Alberto Aparici and Enrique Nácher, a researcher at the CSIC.

The room was packed, and listening to this Valencian who has managed to impact the international community with his research on magic-angle graphene, by opening up the possibility of numerous topological, mathematical and superconducting properties of this material and other two-dimensional materials, with numerous uses in electronic devices and energy production, was an almost unique opportunity.

Pablo Jarillo Herrero has been living in the United States for years.  He graduated in Physics from the University of Valencia in 1999, and after a Master of Science at the University of California in San Diego in 2001, he received his PhD from the Delft University of Technology (Holland) in 2005. Shortly after, he moved to Columbia University (New York) in 2006 and to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 2008. He holds a number of important international awards and prizes such as the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering (2009), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2012), Oliver E. Buckley Award (2020), NAS Award for Scientific Discovery (2021) and the famed Wolf Prize in Physics in 2020, which is second only to the Nobel Prize. Other historic recipients of the Wolf Prize in Physics have been Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, which gives an idea of the global importance of this recognition.

During the talk he explained, in a very didactic way, how through the physics of condensed matter, of the solid state, working specifically with graphene, he discovered that it can have electrical properties that are very different from conventional materials. And he achieved this after a lot of effort by superimposing layers of graphene with an angle of difference between them. This is the famous magic angle and it is what gives the material its superconductivity.

He also gave details of what it is like to work at MIT with 16 researchers and a good budget and how Spain, and Valencia in particular, could be a great research hub if it had institutional and business support and investment in research. In 2012, Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Award for Young Scientific Researchers, with funding through the Department of Energy, for his research over five years.

For the Valencian physicist, in addition to the human team and the budget, it takes a lot of perseverance, effort and perseverance, and he made a comparison with elite athletes who need years of great sacrifice to achieve their goals.

Report by ‘24/7 Valencia’ team

Article copyright ‘24/7 Valencia’

Photo Alberto Aparici, Víctor Duart, Pablo Jarillo, Antonio Rivera, Enrique Nácher

 The Real Sociedad Valenciana de Agricultura y Deportes, since its birth more than 165 years ago, has been a major reference point in the economic, social, political, cultural, recreational, festive and sporting life of Valencia. Among the milestones, it is worth mentioning its presence in the creation of the first agricultural unions and the Agricultural Chamber at the end of the 19th century. In 1909, it took part in the Valencian Regional Exhibition and obtained from the Government that the edition of the event to be held the following year would have a national character. In the middle of the 20th century, it acquired its new headquarters, which had 3,000 metres for different uses. Already in the year 61 it created the Bridge Section and soon after the Canasta Section, which are still very active today and have always been a forum for reflection and a tribune. And everything has been renewed and updated with its current president, Manuel Sánchez Luengo. Today, it carries out numerous cultural activities as well as having social correspondence with 60 clubs in Spain and 40 abroad.