Prof. Xavier Moya is the Founder and CEO of Barocal, a Cambridge University spin-out pioneering refrigerant-gas-free solid-state cooling and heating technology to replace century-old vapour-compression systems.

Xavier completed his BA in 2003 and PhD on magnetic shape memory alloys in 2008 at the University of Barcelona, before becoming a Professor of Materials Physics at the University of Cambridge, where he spent 15+ years researching caloric materials funded by the Royal Society and European Research Council.

Xavier discovered a way to achieve unprecedented performance in barocaloric materials - organic solids that heat and cool under pressure - overcoming longstanding challenges of cost, degradation, and fatigue that limited previous caloric materials.

He launched Barocal in 2019 to commercialise his research breakthrough, securing a $10M Seed round from World Fund, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, and IP Group to scale engineering and accelerate commercialisation.

Barocal won the $1 million 2025 TERA Award and targets the $450B global HVAC market, with technology capable of reducing the heating and cooling sector's 15% share of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.