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The rector of Camilo José Cela University, Emilio Lora-Tamayo D’ocon, has been appointed an academic of the Spanish-American Royal Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters at the Cádiz Faculty of Medicine.
In his admission speech, Lora-Tamayo, PhD in Physical Sciences, spoke about Microelectronics and ‘sensors’, and gave a historical outline of the scientific and technological drivers of the industrial revolutions of the last centuries. He admitted that “the areas of electronics and biology, have been and are the current engines of progress for a good part of the advancement of knowledge, its application and, through it, the progress of society.”
He also explained the concept of the word “sensory”, not recognised by the Royal Spanish Academy, which “refers to the area of science and technology that deals with sensors (…) and that, through a property, are capable of characterizing the presence and intensity of the magnitude considered”, the most common and used example are “mercury or other fluid thermometers”. However, a sensor today is understood as “an object or device capable of changing the shape or value of any of its properties by the presence of physical or chemical magnitudes and transforming them into electrical variables.”
The recently appointed academic of the Royal Academy reviewed some related theories, such as Moore’s Law, “Moore’s three laws”, and its link with the reality we live in today. “It is increasingly true that the exponential advance that has marked the development of microelectronics during the last decades is not following Moore’s Law due to the problems that arise in the nanometric domain, which bring with them not only technological barriers, but also economic considerations derived from the high cost of overcoming them.”
By way of conclusion, the rector of UCJC stressed that “it seems evident that there is a world of microelectronics applications that does not require the use of the most advanced node”, as in the case of the automotive sector, and that “the possibilities of application that microsystems have in an infinity of fields and sectors far removed from the technologies that support these devices, call for stimulating imagination and creativity, to fully exploit the new possibilities that are just beginning to appear.”
The Royal Hispanic American Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters is a Spanish cultural organisation that dates back to 1875 and is headquartered in the Centro Cultural Municipal Reina Sofía in Cadiz. It is integrated into the Institute of Spain and in the Institute of Academies of Andalusia and depends on Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The ceremony was closed by the director of the Academy, Felicidad Rodríguez Sánchez.