About Sander Otte (NL)

Over the past twenty years, the scale of data storage decreased at an astonishing rate. With society currently creating more than a billion gigabytes of data every day, further decrease of data storage area is becoming increasingly relevant. Although currently incredible amounts of data can already be stored on very small areas, we have reached the limit of scaling down any further. Together with his team, however, Prof. Sander Otte from Delft University of Technology found the ultimate solution. He managed to successfully apply a pioneering approach that enables the storage of data at the atomic scale, creating a record-setting hard drive with the smallest data storage area ever achieved. During his talk “Crafting matter atom by atom”, Prof Otte will explain how atomic scale storage can allow 500 times more data storage on identical storage areas, thereby outperforming all other existing media. Furthermore, he will focus on how this discovery, based on the exact positioning of thousands of individual atoms, can broaden possibilities in data storage and the development of novel technologies.