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Tiny self-propelled motors which speed through the water and clean up pollutions along the way or small robots which can swim effortlessly through blood to one day transport medication to a certain part of the body – this sounds like taken from a science fiction movie script. However, Samuel Sánchez is already hard at work in his lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart to make these visions come true. For his innovative research, the 34 years old chemist has now been named as Spain’s top innovators under 35 by the Spanish edition of the journal MIT Technology Review.
Present your scientific approach and your current research findings in not more than 3 minutes in front of an audience of almost 1000 people: That was the task for ten selected Spanish scientists under the age of 35 at the EmTech Meeting, mid of November in Valencia.
The referees evaluated the innovational character of the project, the research career development, the communication skills and the personality of the candidate.
This contest, also known as “elevator pitch” has been won by Samuel Sánchez, who has been elected as best in class and received the Spanish MIT Award “Innovator of the year 2014”.
The jury honored him for his significant contribution in the field of macro- and nanomotors as well as his interdisciplinary research approach. Sánchez combines materials sciences, chemistry, and biology in his work to design and develop small-scale motors and their practical use.
Samuel Sánchez obtained his PhD in analytical chemistry at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2008. He went on to work in Japan and the Leibniz Institute in Dresden. Since 2013, he heads a Max Planck Research group at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart.
The Spanish edition of the journal MIT Technology Review has been giving out this innovation award for four years now.
Combined with this award, Samuel has been nominated directly for the GLOBAL MIT TR35 award.