Nicola Ann Spaldin (born 1969) FRS is professor of materials science at ETH Zurich, known for her pioneering research on multiferroics.

 

Spaldin was inspired to search for multiferroics, magnetic ferroelectric materials, by a remark about potential collaboration made by a colleague studying ferroelectrics during her postdoctoral research studying magnetic phenomena at Yale University from 1996 to 1997.

 

She continued to develop the theory of these materials as a new faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and in 2000 published (under her previous name, Hill) "a seminal article" that for the first time explained why few such materials were known.

 

Following her theoretical predictions, in 2003 she was part of a team that experimentally demonstrated the multiferroic properties of bismuth ferrite.[16] She moved from UCSB to ETH Zurich in 2010.

 

Her publications are listed on Google scholar.