(Image: CERN)
Jorge Guardia-Valenzuela is a bit of an outlier in the world of CERN’s knowledge transfer: this material science engineer started his journey at CERN in direct collaboration with the Knowledge Transfer group, as a technical student working on applications of CERN technologies to industry and conducting his master’s thesis. As part of his work, he tailored a material initially developed for CERN collimators into a thermal management application that could be used in industry.
Jorge then left the Knowledge Transfer group to develop and characterise new graphite-matrix composites for future collimators through CERN’s Doctoral Student Programme, but he never stopped discussing possible applications of the material with external companies. “Working with industry, learning more about their needs and challenges has been very valuable, as it allowed me to integrate new collimator materials into diverse devices. Thanks to the guidance of the Knowledg