Brazilian physicists received an important guest earlier this month, when Dr. Olaf van ‘t Erve, a spintronics expert from the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in Washington DC, visited several Brazilian institutions for lectures about his field of research. He was the most recent participant in the very successful joint visiting program established by the American and Brazilian Physical Societies (APS-SBF), which aims to improve research cooperation between laboratories in Brazil and USA.
Dr. Olaf van ‘t Erve came from an electronics engineering background, before becoming an expert in the physics of spintronics. Within this field he specialized in the transport of electron spin through solid-state materials and spin transport in devices.
Concerning his academic and research career, he got his master and PhD in the Netherlands in 2002 (University of Twente). He did his postdoctoral research at the Naval Research Laboratory. After a 2-year excursion working as senior scientist for Philips Research, he now does his research as a staff member of the NRL in Washington DC. He has a high publication records (h-index 27), in excellent journals, and has more than 2.600 citations.
The purpose of his visit was to deliver seminars (USP-SP, Mackenzie, Unesp-Bauru, and USP-S.Carlos) about his present research in the field of spin transport, to teach a short course in the graduate materials science program (POSMAT) at Unesp University, and to foster cooperation with Brazilian research groups.