Clivia obtained her PhD in Physics in 1984 from Manchester Univ. (UK). She held tenured appointments at St. Andrews and Glasgow Universities in the UK and became a C4 professor at Wuppertal Univ. (Germany) in 1996. From 2004 to 2008 she was a research professor at Univ. College Cork, Tyndall National Institute (Ireland) funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Since May 2007 she is with ICREA based at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology (ICN2). Clivia received awards from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Nuffield Foundation and an Amelia Earhart Fellowship from ZONTA International (USA). She is author of over 470 scientific publications and has edited six books (Researcher ID; E-8418-2010, WoS: h-index 40 and over 6900 citations). She leads a 20-strong team working on phonon engineering and participates in European-level research. Since 2013 she is a visiting professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Research interests

Her group develops new concepts for multi-state variables based on the engineered interactions of phonons with electrons and with photons, in device-like structures. One particular interest is thermal transport in the nanoscale to address heat dissipation in nanoelectronics, the role of phonons in noise and dissipation in nano-scale systems. Another strand is Si-based opto-mechanics for phonon-based information processing.  Our experimental research is anchored in novel nanofabrication methods, such as nanoimprint lithography and directed self-assembly including dimensional and defectivity metrology. The latter is essential to set up standards in manufacturing to ease the uptake of nanotechnology products. In our research we use state of the art linear optical spectroscopy methods, pump-and-probe down to 10’s of femtoseconds and develop new techniques to reach the nanoscale in thermal transport, most notably laser Raman thermometry.