Ciao people! My name is Emanuele and I've just joined the Theory and Simulation unit, working with Alberto Garcia. I'm originally from Italy, but I feel pretty European after living in 4 different countries in the past 5 years. I just finished my PhD program in Dublin and here I work as maintainer/developer of the software aiida-siesta. Aiida-siesta allows to run quantum-mechanical simulations on many systems in an automatic way. The idea is to unlock the power of modern supercomputer in order to create databases of calculated material properties that can then be explored in search for materials with ad-hoc characteristics.

I love sports, swimming and judo mostly. Moreover I like to travel and admire the beauty of the Creation (see picture for a reference!). I'm very exited for this new adventure in Barcelona, I look forward to explore new science and meet new people!

My name is Adolfo, I am nanoscience and nanotechnology student at UAB and I will be at Molecular Nanoscience and Organic Materials Group (NANOMOL) during my TFG research. I am looking forward to learn and contribute as much as possible.

The Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC), together with many research centers and universities, including the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB), have initiated an art project that will represent in a different way thw world of nanotechnology: NANOCAEDRE. Susagna Ricart, from the ICMAB, participates in this project with her expertise in the superconducting phenomena. The presentation of the project will take place at the Basilica Sants Màrtirs Just i Pastor (Barcelona), on Tuesday, 10 December, at 7 pm.

A new protocol from Gervasi Herranz and the MULFOX group at ICMAB shows how magnetic fields can change the propagation of light in confined nanostructured materials and reveal enhanced optical responses. This new protocol is published as a VIDEO-ARTICLE at the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). The new protocol allows to directly study how magnetization changes the photonic response.

We would like to congratulate our colleagues from the NanoEduca programme, created by the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) and Centre de Recursos Pedagògics Específics de Suport a la Innovació i la Recerca Educativa (CESIRE), for the 2018 National Award on Science Communication (Premi Nacional de Comunicació Científica 2018), which they received last night, Tuesday 3 December 2019, at the TNC. 

On Monday, 25 November 2019, a gathering in the entrance of the ICMAB building was announced between 11 and 11:15 am to show respect to the victims and concern for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Members of the ICMAB Gender Equality Committee read the Statement that the Gender Equality Committee and the Committee of Women and Science of the CSIC had prepared, on the occasion of this international day.

The Châtelet team is in YouTube! Thanks to the funding received by the FGCSIC call "Cuenta la Ciencia", we have been able to produce this video and share it with you! Please feel free to share it with your contacts! 

Anna Laromaine, researcher at the NN Group at ICMAB, and one of the Top 100 women leaders in Spain (MujeresyCía), will be at "El Pais Con Tu Futuro" event next 18-19 December in Madrid, to talk in front of thousands of students who are about to decide their future. Good luck, Anna!

Mahdi Chaari, Zsolt Kelemen, Duane Choquesillo-Lazarte, Nerea Gaztelumendi, Francesc Teixidor, Clara Viñas, Carme Nogués* and  Rosario Núñez*  Biomater. Sci., 2019, Advance Article

During the Science Week (Setmana de la Ciència) 2019, which was between the 8 and 17 of November 2019, the ICMAB received the visit of 4 schools, which amounted a total of 185 students. The students could attend the "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", visit some of our labs and participate in the workshops about "Properties of the Minerals and Periodic Table Elements". 

Witold I Tatkiewicz, Joaquin Seras-Franzoso, Elena García-Fruitós, Esther Vazquez, Adriana R. Kyvik, Nora Ventosa, Judith Guasch, Antonio Villaverde, Jaume Veciana*, Imma Ratera*, ACS Biomater. Sci. Eng.20195105470-5480

During the Science Week 2019, in November, six of our researchers brought scientific research closer to the young students aged 15-17 years old within the framework of the programme "A researcher in your classroom". They went to five different highschools and gave a talk to the students, who had the opportunity to learn more about nanoscience and nanotechnology and about what is it like to be a scientist.

Clara Viñas and Francesc Teixidor were in Sfax (Tunisia), where they gave Plenary Talks at the Fourth International Conference of Engineering Sciences for Biology and Medicine (ESBM 2019) and celebrated the opening of the new school year of the "École supérieure polytechnique internationale privée de Sfax-ESPIN" as partner professors. 

The GoNano project organizes the winter school "Creating Social Value with Nanotechnology" on 4-7 February 2020 in Barcelona. The winter school is designed to impart the findings from the project to early stage researchers and to address concepts such as RRI, co-creation, and communication applied to nanotechnology. Deadline for registration is 30 November! Register now before it's too late!

Using statistical mechanics to build a Bayesian machine scientist

by Roger Guimera, ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona

Monday, 25 November 2019 @ 12 pm
ICMAB - Sala d'Actes Carles Miravitlles

Doctor Yu Chen from the Laboratory of Multifunctional Thin Films and Complex Structures (MULFOX) Group at ICMAB defended his PhD thesis on Thursday, 14 November 2019 at the ICMAB. His thesis "Artificial Synapses based on the Photoconductance of LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ Quantum Wells" was supervised by Gervasi Herranz. Congratulations! Continue reading to know more about Yu Chen!

M. Rosa Palacín and Alexandre Ponrouch, from the Solid State Chemistry Group at the ICMAB, are co-authors of a review on "Achievements, Challenges, and Prospects of Calcium Batteries" in a special issue about "Beyond Li ion batteries" of Chemical Reviews (ACS). Congratulations!

Martí Gibert, PhD researcher at the NANOPTO group, participated on Friday, 8 November 2019, on the YouTube Science Truck programme, in which the main topic was Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and the invited scientific youtuber was Anna Morales (Size Matters), who is working on her PhD in Switzerland. Martí talked about Organic Solar Cells and Nanostructures! You can listen him from minute 53:24 to minute 1:02. Well done, Martí!

The Superconducting Materials and Large Scale Nanostructures (SUMAN) group offers in the framework of the ERC-Advanced Grant "Ultrasupertape" and ERC-Proof-of-Concept "Impact" a Postdoctoral Position to work in the industrially manufacturing process for high temperature superconducting coated conductors. Apply for it!

The new edition of the scientific photography contest FOTCIENCIA is now open! The aim of this initiative, organised by the CSIC and the FECYT, is to bring science and technology closer to society. The participants have until 16 December 2019 to send their photographies! Good luck!

Hola! My name is Filipe Correia. I am a Metallurgist with a minor in physics from the very North of Portugal. As a PhD student at the University of Minho, my goal is to increase the thermoelectrics properties of some Transparent conductive oxides. At ICMAB, I will be working with the Nanopto group, measuring thermal conductivity of doped ZnO and TiO2 thin films. I enjoy hiking, swimming and of course playing football. I am very happy to be here, see you around!

Creating Connections, Creating Actions

From scientific results to impactful innovation in a complex society: How Living Labs unite entrepreneurs, scientists, government and public interests into action

On November 22-23, 2019, representatives from all of the Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu Excellence Centres and Units met at the ‘100xCiencia4’ Meeting in Donostia/San Sebastián (Spain) to share experiences around this year's topic, which is "What is science doing for you? Building bridges between science and society".

The prestigious Nature scientific journal celebrated its 150th anniversary on November 4, 2019. In order to commemorate it, the journal published a video on the role played by the journal in the history of science, and also prepared an interactive graph that explains the complex network created by the co-cited journal articles. More than 88,000 articles are published since 1900. 

José P. Jurado, Bernhard Dörling, Osnat Zapata‐Arteaga, Anna Roig, Agustín Mihi, Mariano Campoy‐Quiles. Adv. Energy Mater.2019, 1902385. 

Qiaoming Zhang, Francesca Leonardi, Raphael Pfattner, Marta Mas‐Torrent. Adv. Mater. Interfaces 2019, 6, 1900719

Every year the UAB organizes the Nobel Prize 2019conferences to talk about the science topics of the Nobel Prize. This year, M. Rosa Palacín, ICMAB researcher, will give the talk about the Nobel Prize 2019 in Chemistry, which was given to J. B. Goodenough, M. S. Whittingham and A. Yoshino for the Lithium-ion Batteries. The talks will be on Tuesday, 10 December, at 12 pm at the "Sala d'actes". 

Neus Domingo, Iaroslav Gaponenko, Kumara Cordero-Edwards, Nicolas Stucki, Virginia Pérez-Dieste, Carlos Escudero, Elzbieta Pach, Albert Verdaguer and  Patrycja Paruch. Nanoscale, 2019,11, 17920-17930. 

High resolution electron tomography: from model like systems to real nanomaterials.

The "Fira Recerca en Directe 2020", organized by the "Parc Científic de Barcelona" in collaboration with "la Caixa" Foundation, opens the Popular Election period, so everybody can vote for the projects that they would like to see in CosmoCaixa during the days of the faire (6-9 May 2020). One of the projects is proposed by the ICMAB and the Neuroscience Institute of the UAB (INc). The project is about "C. elegans, the ideal worm as a model organism to study diseases". Until 13 December you can vote for this project! 

Doctor Núria Portolés Gil from the Supercritical Fluids and Functional Matirials Group at ICMAB defended her PhD thesis on Monday, 18 November 2019. Her thesis was entitled "Green synthesis of coordination polymers using supercritical carbon dioxide", and was supervised by Dr. Concepción Domingo and Dr. Ana Maria López-Periago, from the ICMAB, and Dr. Jose Antonio Ayllón, from the UAB. Congratulations, Núria! Continue reading to know more about here next steps!

Our "Manuel Cardona" Library has acquired 17 new scientific books for all our staff! The books are about some of the main topics of our research: magnetism, neutron scattering, smart inorganic polymers, medical imaging, carbon nanomaterials or thermoelectric materials. Take a look at the list below!

I. Fuentes, J. Pujols, C. Viñas, S. Ventura, F. Teixidor, Chem. Eur. J. 2019, 25, 12820

Doctor Inés Temiño from the Molecular Nanoscience and Organic Materials (NANOMOL) Group at ICMAB defended her PhD thesis on Friday, 15 November 2019 at the ICMAB. Her thesis "Solution-Processed Organic Field-Effect Transistors: from Fundamental Aspects to Applications" was supervised by Marta Mas-Torrent. Congratulations! Continue info to know what Inés Temiño will do in a near future!

The First Annual Meeting of PhD researchers in Physics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona(TADeF) will take place next 20-21 November 2019 at the UAB Factulty of Science. From the ICMAB, Teresa Puig (SUMAN group) will give one of the keynote talks on "High Temperature Superconductors: Complex materials with novel physics opportunities". Martí Gibert, PhD researcher at the NANOPTO group, will participate in the meeting with the short talk "Near Infrared Organic Photodetectors based on Enhanced Charge Transfer State Absorption by Photonic Architectures". 

Mayorga Burrezo, P. , Jiménez, V. G., Blasi, D. , Ratera, I. , Campaña, A. G. and Veciana, J. (2019), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.

We announce the forthcoming 2020 E-MRS Spring Meeting and Exhibit, that will be held in Strasbourg, France from 25-29 May 2020. Mariano Campoy-Quiles and Narís Mestres, ICMAB researchers, participate in the organization of some symposia in the fields of "Energy materials" and "Nanomaterials and advanced characterization". Deadline for abstract submission: 15 January 2020.

• Researchers from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) have shown that thermal conductivity can be tuned by an external applied electric field.
• If the material is mechanically deformed in a suitable way, the external applied electric field can be much lower to achieve the same thermal response.
• These advances allow envisaging a truly zero-power analogue of electronics, because phononics circuits would need no power supply.

Two of our PhD researchers, Amanda Muñoz and Pamela Machado, have participated in the CSIC Video Contest “Yo Investigo. Yo soy CSIC”, in which they have to explain their PhD Thesis in 3 minutes! You can vote by clicking "like" to the videos until 13 December 2019. 

Hello! My name is Joana Ribeiro and I am from Guimarães, a city in the North part of Portugal. I am an applied physicist and just started my PhD at the University of Minho. The goal of my work is to increase the thermoelectric properties of Transparent conductive oxide thin films. At ICMAB, I will be working together with the Nanopto group, measuring the thermal conductivity of doped ZnO and TiO2 thin films.

I practice japanese martial arts and enjoy travelling, photography and drawing.

Best Regards, Joana Ribeiro

On Tuesday, 3 December 2019, the ICMAB organizes an event to talk and share experirences on ERC projects called "European Research Council (ERC) funding opportunities – a 360° overview". The event will count with the presence of Nadine Vermorel, from the ERC Executive Agency (ERCEA) and with Lucía Benito, from the CSIC European Program. Five of the ICMAB ERC grantees will talk about their ERC experience from their own point of view. Come and join us, if you want to know more about funding opportunities for these ERC excellent projects!