I find it amazing how every-day technologies, such as lasers, transistors and hard-drive read-heads, are based on beautiful and, to some extent exotic, physics. This demonstrates the strong ties between fundamental and applied science.

Rembert Duine is a Full Professor and Chair of Theory for Spin-based Nanoelectronics in the Department of Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His main fields of expertise are condensed-matter physics, many-body physics and his current research interests include spintronics, graphene, topological insulators and cold-atom systems. Other interests include quantum Hall ferromagnets, semi-conductor bilayers and superconductivity.

Rembert currently leads the ‘Spin Transport Beyond Electrons – SPINBEYOND’ project, researching revolutionary new approach to electronics is based on information processing and transfer by means of magnons (quanta of the collective spin-wave excitations in magnets). He also works on so-called magnetic skyrmions, whirl-like structures in the magnetization of magnetic materials that are fundamentally interesting but may also have ramifications for magnetic-memory applications. Rembert was also one of a group of theoretical physicists that proposed a way to simulate black holes on an electronic chip, making it possible to study fundamental aspects of black holes in an on-chip laboratory on earth.

Rembert Duine obtained his PhD. in Theoretical Physics (with honors) from Utrecht University, with a thesis entitled “Atom-Molecule Coherence in Bose Gases”. He also holds an MSc in Theoretical Physics from the same university. He was a postdoc researcher at the University of Texas at Austin from 2004 to 2006 when he returned to Utrecht, where he currently leads a condensed-matter theory group kick-started by a Starting Independent Researcher Grant of the European Research Council and an VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and currently funded through NWO and a European Research Councel Consolidator Grant.

Rembert publishes regularly in leading journals and has (co-)organized many workshops, sessions and conferences, such as Quantum Spintronics at the SPICE center in Mainz, Germany andTransport Beyond Electrons at Physics@FOM Veldhoven. He is a Member of a wide variety of professional organizations and committees. These include the NWO-Veni selection committee, QuSpin Center at Trondheim, Board of Physics Society “Natuurkundig Gezelschap te Utrecht”, FOM committee on Condensed Matter and Optical Physics and the Rathenau Institute valorization focus group.