Eduardo Bernal is defending his thesis: "Science offers a way to explore complex questions rigorously and creatively"

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'Strong Field Physics in Periodic Crystals' is the title of the thesis of Eduardo Bernal, who is defending his work on April, 10, at 2PM in our Salón de Actos. "My research consist on trying to unveil how electrons behave in extremely short periods of time", he says when asked about explaining his thesis for a non-scientific audience. "Indeed, our order of magnitude of time was attoseconds, which means 10^{-18} seconds. To give the reader some sense of the scale of this unit: an attosecond is to a second, as a second is to approximately 31.69 billion years, which is the age of the universe," he adds.

He has been working alongside with Rui E. Silva, and came to the Materials Science Institute of Madrid by chance: "When I accepted the PhD offer, I didn’t know it was at the ICMM. But once I found out, I was excited because I'd done my internships here and had a great experience". 

Talking about the main applications of his research, he says: "The main applications of my research are in light-wave electronics, basically, using light to control electronic processes." An example of this: "we can use this to make computing operations a lot faster. A big part of my thesis was showing that you can perform logical operations using light at speeds way beyond what current processors can do". 

Bernal says he has learnt a lot during his period at the ICMM: "Beyond all the technical skills and scientific knowledge, I’ve learned a lot about persistence, managing my time, and being okay with not having all the answers right away." Indeed, he really thinks this experience will contribute to his future: "It really sharpened my problem-solving and analytical thinking skills. I also learned how to handle long-term projects and uncertainty, which I think will help a lot in whatever comes next," he says. 

This is linked with the reasons why he became a scientist: "I had a deep curiosity about how the world works and a desire to contribute to something larger than myself. Science offers a way to explore complex questions rigorously and creatively, and I’ve always been drawn to that balance of logic and imagination."

Now, once his PhD is done, he feels it's time to try "something new": "I’m planning to move into industry and explore opportunities outside of academia".