Profile

My name is Ferran and I was born in Castellfollit de la Roca, a small town near Barcelona which is on top of a cliff (check it out, it is very pretty). When I was young I wanted to be an inventor, until I found out that this wasn’t actually a job (😅) so I decided that I would be a scientist, which is pretty close.

After high school, I wanted to study engineering, but because I was quite good at maths I decided to do a double degree in Engineering and Maths at Barcelona. Originally I liked engineering more, but as time went by I started preferring maths. Once I finished my degree I decided I wanted to do a PhD in maths abroad. I applied to Oxford and I was very lucky to get an offer so in 2014 I moved to the UK.

Moving to a new country is one of the most exciting things I have ever done! I spent 4 years at Oxford doing my PhD in Mathematics (which is basically like a course that teaches you how to be a researcher). After that, I got my current job at Warwick, where I have been doing research on batteries since 2018.

Even though they sound very unrelated, in my work I use maths to help design better batteries. Mathematics allows us to write “equations” that explain how things work. The coolest thing about the equations is that they can also predict what would happen in a given situation. This is very useful because, for example, we can imagine a new type of battery and predict how it will work before building it (even though building it and testing it in the lab is very important too!).

In fact, it is quite hard to explain what a “typical day” is for me (or at least how it was before Covid). As a researcher, I spent a lot of time working on my own: programming on the computer, writing notes and reports, thinking… But I also spend a lot of time talking to people. After all, research is a collaborative effort!

I have many meetings with people I work with to put together our findings, but also present my work at conferences where researchers from all over the world meet to talk (and listen!) about science. This is very exciting because you can meet new people, and I have met people from all over the world thanks to that. Before Covid, we would meet in person, which gave me the opportunity to travel to many countries but now everything happens virtually. 😔 Hopefully, we can travel again soon and I can meet some of my friends again

I would team up with an animator to design some cool videos about science (mainly about maths and batteries) and share them on Youtube so kids from all over the world can watch them to learn a bit more about what scientists do.