The year 2020 has been very special and a challenge to all, imposed by the pandemic. All members of the lab did their best to keep projects running, maintaining means to perform experiments and simulations, to turn their university lecturing remote and keep welcoming master students in the lab, and most importantly, to sustain social exchange and the feeling of a working community. The academic world showed its resilience against our much-reduced possibilities to travel, by quickly developing means for distant participation at conferences and schools. We are confident in our collective ability to turn this imposed constraint into experience for a better future, making a leap in the use of digital networking means, and thereby contributing to lowering the carbon footprint of our professional activities.
On the side of partnership, we are happy to be involved in seven new ANR projects, five European projects including two training networks and two ERC PoC, and the renewal of several key programs such as with DARPA, Samsung and INTEL. As regards innovation, the Spintronics Factory consortium in which Spintec is highly active released its roadmap for spintronics in Europe, through a review in Nature Electronics. Finally, our startups are still expanding, Antaios has raised 11M$ and HProbe more than €2 million in equity funding.
We have been actively preparing the future through gathering new collaborators. The year 2020 has been quite successful on this matter with Kevin Garello joining as an MRAM CEA research scientist, Lorena ANGHEL as Professor at the Grenoble Institute of Technology and Philippe TALATCHIAN as CEA research scientist to contribute to artificial intelligence. Adriana STOENESCU joined as CNRS assistant strengthening the financial and administrative team, and Nicolas MOLLARD as CEA technician joining the instrumentation team.
The year 2021 comes with its load of challenges and opportunities. Following our successful scientific evaluation for the period 2016-2020, we are looking forward to shaping our strategy for the long-term future of SPINTEC, being confirmed as directors for the five years to come. We intend to keep the mission of SPINTEC at the crossroads of research and innovation, covering the most modern aspects of spintronics.
We wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2021, synonymous with hope and success!
Lucian PREJBEANU, Executive Director
Olivier FRUCHART, Deputy Director
