Clivia obtained her PhD in Physics in 1984 (Manchester Univ., UK). She held tenured appointments at St. Andrews and Glasgow Universities and became a C4 professor at Wuppertal Univ. (Germany) in 1996. During 2004-8 she was a research professor at Univ. College Cork, Tyndall National Institute (Ireland). Since May 2007 she is with ICREA based at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology where she heads a 17-strong team working on phonon engineering and nanofabrication. 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 497 scientific papers, of which 377 are indexed  (WoS, Researcher ID: E-8418-2010), has an h-index of 42 and 7518 citations. She edited six books on low dimensional structures and nanofabrication. She is a guest professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

Research interests

Her group investigates new concepts for multi-state variables based on the engineered interactions of phonons with photons, electrons and magnons, in device-like structures. One particular interest is thermal transport at 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 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 and the 3-omega method for fluids.