Barcelona Metropolis

Lluís Torner is a person who radiates passion and enthusiasm for cutting-edge research, particularly in the science of light, photonics. The Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO, Institute of Photonic Sciences) is a centre where around 500 scientists work on how to use light particles – photons – to develop technology that can be applied in the fields of health, communications and energy. In 20 years, Lluís Torner has seen 2,000 ICFO-ians from around 70 different countries pass through the centre. The term “ICFO-ians” reflects the sense of belonging the researchers have, having contributed to broadening the horizons of knowledge from the Barcelona metropolitan area, in Castelldefels. We caught him at a time of change, just months after stepping down from the leadership of the centre he founded.

It’s going great. I’m currently doing things I really enjoy and that require experience. In particular, I’m working on continental matters, which allow me to engage with a variety of stakeholders – some from Europe and others from beyond. It’s a new phase, one that I requested. Running a centre like this has been a privilege, a rare stroke of luck. But I felt it was time for a change. New people need to come in with fresh ideas and energy. I started at 40, and now I’m 22 years older [laughs]. Now we have a director in his early 40s who has built a team of young, enthusiastic people with ideas that are taking ICFO to the next level.

I think Oriol has a motivation very similar to mine. We have many points in common. Oriol did his PhD here, but then spent several years abroad. I also left, and I had this feeling, which could be summed up as: “Why is it that in other parts of the world, there are world-class research institutions doing very innovative things – in our case, in physics – but in our own country, we don’t have anything like that?” So, when you set out to build one of these institutions here, you know that you’ll have to change the way you work.

As a researcher, you’re primarily focused on your own ideas. But as a director, your main role is to support others so that they can carry out cutting-edge research. This requires a slightly different approach, especially at a stage in your career when you’re at the peak of your own research. I had to make a choice: whether to continue as a director or stay focused on my research. I think Oriol faced a similar decision. He’s passionate about helping the country’s science become a global leader, and now he will have to devote a significant part of his time – not to his own research, which he will still maintain, as I did – but to supporting others in conducting advanced research. I’m really excited about this, because I’m sure he’s going to do an outstanding job.

We take very few, usually just one or two out of every hundred. These are individuals who need to have a strong passion for research and a clear desire to pursue it. Ultimately, it’s like anything in life, isn’t it? Some things really have to be something you love, and research is one of them. We need to ensure the person will get a lot out of their time at ICFO, as they’ll be here for their PhD and only for four years. So, we must choose the right people. It’s not just about their talent, which is important, but also about their motivation.

The merit of many of the world’s leading research institutions is their ability to help ordinary people do extraordinary things. The environment pushes you to create things you wouldn’t elsewhere, even though you’re the same person. This is what sets apart institutions we often mythologise, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), or universities like Yale, Stanford and Princeton. There are people there with very unique qualities, but also those without them, who do exceptional work there because of the environment created around them. What’s happening around you represents the frontier of human knowledge. And when you’re 25, that’s incredible. The same thing happens here at ICFO.

That’s exactly what we’ve always aimed to do, though we don’t always succeed, of course! One of our core values is “We believe in everyone’s potential”. We need to select individuals who will truly make the most of their four years doing their PhD to achieve exceptional things. Ultimately, it’s up to the individual to be creative and put in the work, but they need to be in an environment that allows them to thrive. If you’re extremely creative and motivated, but the environment doesn’t support you, it becomes a lot harder.

I often think of Kilian Jornet. If he had been born on Carrer d’Aribau [in Barcelona], he might still have become Kilian Jornet, but his chances of success would have been much slimmer. Kilian obviously has an exceptional genetic make-up, but he grew up in Cerdanya [a mountainous region in the Pyrenees], where, by the age of eight, he was already running everywhere. So, first, you need to select the right people; second, they need to have the right conditions; and third, you need to pick research topics where they can be at the forefront of the world. This is tough because there’s so much talent in the world, but we try to approach it with enthusiasm and humility.

The credit really belongs to him. The idea of creating a world-leading centre – in my case, in physics – was envisioned by countless people in Catalonia. My idea wasn’t anything extraordinary. In fact, I was convinced he’d turn me down and I had already planned to return to the US with my partner to continue our research. What was exceptional was that Andreu said: “Let’s do it”. He had a vision of creating several institutions and he had a list that included the Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG, Centre for Genomic Regulation), the Institut Català d’Investigació Química (ICIQ, Catalan Institute for Chemical Research) and the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (Institute for Catalan Research and Advanced Studies, ICREA). He told me: “Great, let’s go ahead. You’re a bit late, though, because there’s very little funding left, but we can still add another centre to the list”. I suggested that we find someone else to take on the director’s role, but he insisted that if we were going to set up a photonics centre, I would need to lead it. It took me some time to accept, as I wanted to continue doing research. But now we have a robust and well-established system that can make significant contributions to the country – something that simply didn’t exist 25 years ago.

Yes, absolutely. But it was a tough decision, I have to say. If it had been about running a centre anywhere else in the world, other than Barcelona, I would have said no. I would have continued as a researcher. But here, I had the opportunity to help create a leading photonics centre in my country. We had very little money, but Andreu had another brilliant idea: to establish these entities as foundations. This allowed them to define themselves without being constrained by the limitations of the legal framework. That was a real stroke of luck because, while you can make mistakes, it also gives you the chance to build a flexible, dynamic and eager organisation that attracts people from all over the world and gives them the resources to achieve great things.

Centres like ICFO, CRG or ICIQ would likely have not emerged in many other parts of Spain. Perhaps in a few other locations – I won’t name names to avoid causing trouble – but Barcelona is definitely one of them. The city has a lot to offer: its environment, climate and an open, tolerant society, among other things. The only downside is that housing isn’t cheap, but that’s true in many parts of the world. A lot of people, when they finish their PhD, try to stay in Barcelona.

The Fundació Cellex has played a crucial role in supporting ICFO, with their generous donations. But at the same time, Pere Mir had a genuine interest in what we were doing, as did much of the broader community. My friend Eudald Carbonell always says that humans are hairless primates. And I have very little hair left… [laughs]. We are primates, and primates are a social species. Doing something that goes against your environment is incredibly difficult. You end up feeling down, getting depressed… This has happened to many people over the years. Humanity eventually recognised Van Gogh, but during his life, he faced harsh criticism and ultimately took his own life. Humans need the support of their environment. This has certainly been the case in Barcelona and Catalonia for the past 20 years. There’s been a widespread, global consensus across political, social, business and media sectors that research is vital. And it’s worked out well for us because you feel that what you’re doing is valued by your fellow citizens. That gives you a real boost, and you wake up feeling different when you know people think what you’re doing is worthwhile.

We were very good friends. He was older than me and, in many ways, a mentor. We worked together for many years to convince people that the right model was that of research centres like ICFO or IRB Barcelona. That was fairly easy to do in Catalonia, but it took more effort across the rest of Spain. Joan helped enormously because he was very well-respected in Spain. He had a solid reputation and was a pioneer. On top of that, he was incredibly fun and a wonderful person. He passed away on a Tuesday night, but the night before he did, he called me to say goodbye and let me know he wouldn’t be able to attend the next board meeting. He was quite the character… He really believed in his mission. He was absolutely convinced that what we were doing was vital for the country. And so, he wanted to make sure everything was in order until the very last moment – just 24 hours before he passed. It really left an impression on me.

Light is a crucial tool for many different things. In the field of technology, photonics is everywhere: in medicine, the environment, communications, industry, and so on. The thing is, it’s often hidden inside a device, so we don’t see it. But inside that device, there’s something that uses light to carry out the function you need. For example, in medical imaging diagnostics or the fibre optics used for the internet.

Typically, the photons [particles of light] we use in photonics come from lasers, rather than from other sources like the sun. Sunlight photons are different and disordered. The sun has blue, green, red, yellow photons, and when we see them all together, we perceive them as white light. But for technological purposes, you need ordered photons that all behave in the same way. They should all be green, or red, or blue, and each one should have a specific function. This can’t be achieved with sunlight, which is why we use laser light for technology. While we harness sunlight to create energy with solar cells that capture photons from our star, for everything else, we rely on the ordered photons from lasers.

One of our programmes involves studying exactly what happens in a mouse’s brain when it begins to develop Alzheimer’s. What happens to the neurons that causes the brain to malfunction? To find out, we need extremely precise instruments, which can’t be achieved with a scalpel. We need tools like laser photons, which allow us to study the chemical composition of the mouse brain. We also apply this to cancer research. The disease starts with a cell that eventually produces a tumour. We want to understand exactly what happens to that cell when it starts to develop cancer. What is going on inside the cell? How does its internal composition change? This is challenging because the cell is alive and very small, and we want to observe what’s happening within it. We need a very delicate and refined tool to study this. That’s where photonics comes in, in collaboration with doctors and biologists.

One thing we’ve done, thanks in part to the support of several philanthropists, is build a medical photonics network in Barcelona, which brings together ICFO and all the hospitals. We meet regularly, where they tell us about the challenges they’re facing, we discuss the solutions we can offer, and then we test some out.

For example, babies face a challenge that adults don’t: when something hurts, they can’t express it, which makes diagnosis much more difficult because you can’t know exactly what’s wrong with the baby. However, they also have an advantage in that their skin and bones, particularly in the head, are much thinner. There are photonic solutions that take advantage of this. Infrared light allows us to see inside the brain to understand what’s happening with the baby. We’re already doing this with the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.

When you send a photo via WhatsApp to Tokyo, that image leaves here and travels through a fibre optic cable, with photons moving all the way to the other side of the world. Since light particles travel at 300,000 kilometres per second, the photo reaches Tokyo in less than a tenth of a second. You do this, and so does everyone else. There’s an enormous volume of traffic worldwide, and it all works. I find it a bit miraculous, and remember, this is my field! Part of this is thanks to the fact that, in the last fifty years, we’ve developed chips that enable us to do these things at lightning speed, and Barcelona plays a key role in this.

Chips are everywhere, even in the most everyday items. For instance, the chip in your electric toothbrush is more powerful than the one on Apollo 11 when it went to the Moon. Today’s chips are incredibly powerful, performing feats of astonishing power, but they also come with challenges. For example, they consume a lot of energy. So, we need to design new chips that consume less energy and don’t worsen the world’s biggest problem: climate change. This is where photonics can make a real difference. At the ICFO, we lead PIXEurope, a 400-million-euro European programme to create the next generation of photonic chips, capable of doing the same things but with much lower energy consumption.

No, no, no. Retirement isn’t something I’m thinking about. So far I’ve been very fortunate in life, almost in every way. I had the misfortune of losing my parents when they were quite young, especially my mother, which was very hard. I know it happens to many people, but it’s one of the things I look back on with sadness. However, overall, I’ve had a lot of luck, because I’ve been supported by many people. Also in terms of my family, friends, colleagues at ICFO, the opportunity to carry out this project, and so on. I’ve had extraordinary luck. I’ve also been lucky health-wise, because even at 63, I’m still doing the same things I was doing in my early 30s. That reassures me and makes me feel really good. So, unless I have a health problem, I don’t think about retiring. I really enjoy what I do, and there are so many things I can contribute to. Humanity faces some enormous problems, and at the ICFO, we can help solve them a little.

There are many studies that show how, over the last two centuries, humanity has made improvements in almost every area. On average, we’re living longer, enjoying more freedoms, there’s greater gender equality, more education and more opportunities… except for one thing: the planet itself. We’re in a much worse situation than we were a hundred years ago. And there’s nothing indicating that we’re going to change course, because humanity is still consuming and doing the same things it did ten years ago.

Perhaps the solution isn’t necessarily to stop making cement, but to make cement that doesn’t emit CO₂. This is something physics is clear about. Climate change models predict things that are already happening, and if we don’t change, they will lead us to a huge disaster. So, everyone who can contribute should do so. From our side, through photonics, we can improve systems that capture solar energy, CO₂ and methane from the atmosphere. This is where I also want to contribute and do my part.

I absolutely love the mountains; they bring me great joy and make me feel at peace. But they’re also one of the places where climate change is most dramatically evident. When I was 20, there were around forty glaciers in the Pyrenees, some of them quite large. Now, only four remain and they’re very small. We will witness the disappearance of glaciers like Aneto and Viñamala. Action must be taken – humanity needs to get to work. What’s more, we’re at a point where some of the leaders now coming to power seem determined to do nothing. Climate change is already causing gradual disruptions, but some models predict even more severe and radical events. These could happen within your lifetime. In mine, I’m not sure, but if we fail to address the issue during this century, we could face catastrophic changes. This is, therefore, the challenge that humanity must solve.