Prof. Dr. Salvador Pané i Vidal (Barcelona, 1980) is Professor of Materials for Robotics at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) and Co-Director of the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab (MSRL) at ETH Zürich.
He obtained his B.S. (2003), M.S. (2004), and Ph.D. (2008) in Chemistry from the Universitat de Barcelona, with a specialization in magnetic composites and magnetoresistive alloys. He joined the MSRL in 2008 as a postdoctoral researcher and was appointed Senior Research Scientist in 2012.
Prof. Pané is the author of more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and educational book chapters. His research bridges chemistry and electrochemistry with small-scale robotics, focusing on the miniaturization of magnetic materials, conductive polymers, and hydrogels for biomedical and targeted drug delivery applications.
At ETH Zürich, he heads the MSRL Electrochemistry Laboratory, which he founded in 2010. He teaches a course in nanorobotics and supervises multiple Ph.D. theses. His research is conducted in close collaboration with industrial and academic partners, including Hirtenberger AG, IGS Research, EMPA, and Steiger AG.
He has coordinated several major European research projects, including MANAQA (FET Open) and ANGIE (FET Proactive). In June 2013, he was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant (€1.5 million) for research on composite nanomaterials for chemical and biomedical applications.
From 2015 to 2019, Prof. Pané chaired the COST Action “e-MINDS”, connecting over 40 European academic and industrial groups in electrochemical manufacturing and corrosion science.
He has served on the Editorial Board of Applied Materials Today (Elsevier) since 2016 and has been a member of the Advisory Board of Small Science (Wiley) since 2022. He represents Switzerland in the European Academy of Surface Technology (EAST).
Prof. Pané is also co-founder of the start-ups Magnes AG and Oxyle AG. In 2017, he received an ERC Consolidator Grant for the development of remotely controlled nanorobots, followed by the Big-on-Small Award at MARSS and an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant in 2019 for water-cleaning applications.
In 2023, he was elected Corresponding Member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Section of Science and Technology.
