The International Meeting for Chemistry Expoquimia will be hosting the INDUSTRIAL DIALOGUES Webinars, a total of 4 seminars discussing different topics related to the cores of the triennial meeting: circular economy, digitalization, and technology transference. This last topic will be covered by Nora Ventosa, from the Molecular Nanoscience and Organic Materials (NANOMOL) group. 

Researchers from the Nanomol group at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), the CIBER-BBN network and the ICTS Nanbiosis U6, and members of the TECNIO technology transfer network ACCIÓ-Generalitat de Catalunya, together with the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT, USA) and the University of Parma (UNIPR, Italy) have developed a new nanomaterial for bioimaging. The results of the study are the result of the TECNIOspring PLUS project co-financed by ACCIÓ and the European Commission.

As scientific developments get more and more complex, the challenge of communicating any innovation increases. Despite the increasing amount of applications of new materials in day to day life, explaining how they work is not an easy task, especially with younger people, who might not see any of the more advanced concepts in their science classes. Anna May Masnou, Head of the Communication Department at the ICMAB, has written an article at the SOCIEMAT magazine Material-ES about the MATHEROES initiative, which personalizes material properties into superheroes.

Researchers at the ICMAB, UAB and the ALBA Synchrotron, in collaboration with the UB and ICN2, have developed a new technique to locally modify the properties of a metamagnetic material. The method consists in applying local pressure to the surface of the material using nanometric needles and allows a much more easy and local modification than current methods. The research opens the door to a more accurate and precise control of magnetic materials and allows to improve the architecture and capacity of magnetic digital memories.

The MSCA IF Project entitled Tuning COPs (Conducting Organic Polymers) with IP Clara Viñas, was selected for publication in the ‘Results in Brief’ section of the European Commission’s CORDIS website, in six languages. The article features the main results of the project. "Tuning COPs" started in October 2017 and finished in October 2019.

The Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) features in its FRONT COVER the recently published article "Too Persistent to Give Up: Aromaticity in Boron Clusters Survives Radical Structural Changes" by Francesc Teixidor et al. Do you think the balls look like Christmas balls or like billiard balls?

The researchers from four ICMAB Research Groups will be joining another 35 groups from 14 different universities, as well as research and technology centers, with the objective of boosting the energy sector in Catalunya and turning it into a strong international referent for innovation, at the R+D+I Energy for Society Network (XRE4S). 

When the SARS-CoV-2 virus began to break out in Spain, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association in Barcelona launched a fundraising campaign. Some institutions and people in China contacted them and donated them some masks. Wenchao Duan is a PhD fellow at the ICMAB and member of this Association: "On the premise of respecting their wishes, the Association has donated masks mainly to hospitals, nursing homes, health departments and research institutes in Spain", he says. 

The ICMAB has started this week to resume the scientific activity in the laboratories that were stopped due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This week the Metropolitan Area containing Bellaterra and the UAB Campus has passsed to the advanced phase zero (phase 0.5), so researchers and other workers considered to be "non-essential" can start to return to their workplaces. The return will be at a slow pace, but we are very happy to be able to do so!