Xavier Moya is a Professor of Materials Physics in the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. He completed a BA in 2003, and a PhD on magnetic shape memory alloys in 2008, at the Physics Department in the University of Barcelona. He then moved to Cambridge in 2008, where he works on the thermal properties of materials, focusing on phase transitions involving structural, electrical and magnetic degrees of freedom. Possible applications include environmentally friendly solid-state cooling and heating, and to this end he launched the start-up Barocal Ltd in 2019.

Xavier was awarded the Ramon Margalef Prize in 2009, the Spanish Royal Society of Physics Young Researcher in Experimental Physics Prize in 2015, and the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK Emerging Talent Award in 2017. He is a member of the UK Young Academy, the International Science Council’s global roster of experts, and a Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Fellow. In 2025, he was named an APS Fellow.

Plenary talk: Advancements in Barocaloric materials and devices: State of the art and perspectives