Awards

In the framework of the XXXII Chemistry Debate of the IEC (Institut d'Estudis Catalans), the Catalan Chemical Society (SCQ) awarded, on 16 September 2020, the certificates and awards of the 14th edition of the Research Projects Awards in Chemistry for high school students. One of the finalists of the awards, Arnau Garcia Labaila, did a project on nanomedicine to face cancer, supervised by one of the first PhD fellows graduated at the ICMAB Inorganic Materials and Catalysis Lab, Dr. Mar Abad Merino. 

The Societat Catalana de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (SCN²) celebrates the second edition of the Dresselhaus Awards that rewards TFG (Final Degree Projects) presentations about Nanoscience and Nanotechnology research. 

The Severo Ochoa Excellence award is given to centers that showcase leadership and scientific impact in the international scale, and will help fund some of ICMAB’s research lines until 2023. On 15 July 2020 the provisional resoluiton announced the awarded research centers of its last call. 

Amanda Muñoz, a PhD researcher from the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites (NN) group, joined the Biorender Graphical Abstract challenge with a visualization of her group’s work with C. elegans and nanoparticles. Her figure has become one of the finalists in the contest, and it has already opened new opportunities for learning. 

In its 15th edition, the L'Oréal-UNESCO "For Women in Science" awards five prizes of 15,000 euros each to support research projects carried out by Spanish women scientists in the area of Physical Sciences, Mathematics and/or Computer and Information Sciences. The deadline for application will remain open until 13 September 2020. These should be done through the official website "For Women in Science".

The 12th International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics #HOPV20 was an online conference held beween 26 and 29 May 2020. Enrique Pascual, PhD fellow at the Nanopto Group, received the Best ePoster Content and Discussion award at the Symposium S4 on Organic Solar Cells. His poster was entitled "Towards Photovoltaic Windows: Laser-assisted Fabrication of Semitransparent OPV Modules Based on Non-fullerene Acceptors’". Congratulations!

Manuel Souto, former PhD researcher at the Nanomol Group, has been awarded with the European Award for Doctoral Thesis in Molecular Magnetism (ADocMolMag) call 2019, organised by the European Institute of Molecular Magnetism, for his PhD Thesis "Multifunctional Materials based on TTFPTM dyads: towards new Molecular Switches, Conductors and Rectifiers" carried out at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Congratulations, Manuel!

Four ICMAB graduates have been awarded by the UAB with the PhD Extraordinary Award for their doctoral thesis, developed during the period 2016-2017: Bernhard Dörling in the field of Physics, Laura González and Magdalena Kierkowicz in the field of Materials Science, and Elena Oleshkevich in the field of Chemistry. Congratulations!

Elena Oleshkevich, previous PhD fellow supervised by Clara Viñas at the LMI group, and currently working at the Norwegian company Jotun, has been awarded with one of the "Producto del Año 2020" awards for the industrial project "Majestic Pure Color" paint, selected as the best innovative product of 2020 in the sector of coatings and paintings.

Iván Caño and Remei Escudero, former Bachelor Students in Physics and Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the UAB, have won, respectively, the 2nd and 3rd prize of the Dresselhaus Awards, organized by the Catalan Society of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (SCN2). The two students had to defend their work by presenting a poster to a jury formed by PhD fellows of related fields. 

The Societat Catalana de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (SCN2) held its First Annual Congress of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology on Saturday, 16 November 2019. The event took place at Casa Elizalde in Barcelona and focused on Energy harvesting, Environment and Sustainable Development. Martí Gibert, PhD fellow at NANOPTO group won the poster contest with his work on “Near Infrared Organic Photodetectors based on Enhanced Charge Transfer State Absorption by Photonic Architectures”. Congratulations!

The ICMAB is now a member of SECPHO, a national technological innovation cluster formed by companies, technology centres and research centres. SECPHO is focused on promoting technological innovation through the application of photonic technologies, or technologies based on light, to all types of sectors of our economy. 

Joan Ricard Ibáñez is the new General Manager of the ICMAB since this October. We would like to welcome him and thank him for joining us in our project!

Pol Sallés has been awarded with a "la Caixa" INPhINIT (MSCA COFUND) grant to come to the ICMAB to start his PhD Thesis with researcher Mariona Coll in the field of perovskites for solar cells. Congratulations, Pol! 

It's time to meet Zsolt Kelemen, our #MSCA IF Fellow of the Week! Zsolt is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory of Inorganic Materials and Catalysis group, and he is working in the framework of the Tuning COPs project. Congratulations, Zsolt!

Judit Tomsen, PhD fellow at the Nanomol group, was awarded with the best oral presentation at the European Students Colloid Conference (ESC-2019), that took place in Varna (Bulgaria) on 18-22 June 2019.

The winner of the 16th edition of the contest FOTCIENCIA 2019 "Trampa de luz" from Cristiano Matricardi, ICMAB PhD researcher, has been designated as "Photo of the month" in the CSIC Newsletter. 

Amanda Muñoz, Master student and researcher in the N&N group at ICMAB is one of the winners of the #100QSD microstories contest organized by @CSICDivulga and @CatarataLibros on Twitter! Congratulations! We have asked her about her experience in this Twitter contest, and this is what she says: 

Cristiano Matricardi, PhD fellow at the NANOPTO group (Nanostructured Materials for Optoelectronics and Energy Harvesting) is one of the recipients of the 16h edition of the science photography contest "FOTCIENCIA" awards. From a total of 697 photographies, 7 photos have been chosen by the jury as the winners, and "Trampa de luz" is one of them. Congratulations! 

Last week, during the International Battery Association (IBA) 2019 meeting in San Diego, Alexandre Ponrouch, researcher at ICMAB, received the IBA 2019 Early Career Award. The International Battery Association (IBA) awards significant contributions to battery research and technology development that have impacted the advancement of energy storage systems, and for lifelong service to the IBA. The awards were recognized at the banquet of the IBA meeting on Thursday, March 7, 2019. Congratulations to all the winners of IBA2019! 

The dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", prepared by a group of women of ICMAB-CSIC, was awarded with a FGCSIC "Cuenta la Ciencia" grant in its second call, this year 2019. The project is entitled "El salón de las mujeres sabias" and aims to stimulate and promote the interst in scientific careers by providing examples of women scientists from different periods of our history.

Miquel Torras, PhD fellow at the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites (NN) group, received on 29 January 2019 the Extraordinary Award for his Master in Applied Materials Chemistry at the University of Barcelona (UB) (2016-2017).

Alexandre Ponrouch, researcher at the ICMAB, has been selected as 2019 recipient of the International Battery Association (IBA) Early Career Award. The award recognizes his inspiring contribution to the advancement of electrochemical energy storage systems. 

Judith Molrà-Folch has been granted with a TECNIOspring Plus grant from ACCIÓ for the project "Fluorescent organic nanoparticles for Bioimaging", supervised by Dr. Nora Ventosa, from the NANOMOL group at ICMAB-CSIC. 

Martí Gich, ICMAB reseracher at the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites Group, has been awarded with a prestigious 2018 European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant (CoG) for his project entitled “Ferrites-by-design for Millimeter-wave and Terahertz Technologies” (FeMiT).

On 8 November 2018, the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) decided to incorporate six new numerary members, two in Biological Sciences and four in Science and Technology. Nora Ventosa, Doctor in Chemical Engineering and researcher at ICMAB-CSIC, was designated new numerary member in the Science and Technology section. Congratulations!

Roberta Verrelli, granted with a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación fellowship, will work in the group of Solid State Chemistry, with M. Rosa Palacín, in the field of next-generation batteries. On the other hand, Elzbieta Pach, granted with a Juan de la Cierva-Formación, will work with Albert Verdaguer, in the SURFACES group.

On Monday, 17 September 2018, Xavier Obradors, ICMAB Director, and Riccardo Rurali, Deputy Director and President of the Gender Equality Committee at the ICMAB, received the CSIC Gender Equality Certificate (Distintivo de Igualdad de Género del CSIC) by the CSIC President, Rosa Menéndez and by Rafael Rodrigo, General Secretary of Scientific Policy Coordination from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, in Madrid. 

Prof. Jaume Veciana (ICMAB-CSIC/CIBER-BBN) has been honored with the Olivier Kahn Plenary Lecture given at the 16^th International Conference on Molecule-Based Magnets (ICMM 2018), held on September 1-5, 2018, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Three ICMAB graduates have been awarded by the UAB with the PhD Extraordinary Award for their doctoral thesis, developed during the period 2015-2016: Justo Cabrera in the field of Chemistry, and María de la Mata Fernández and Manuel Souto in the field of Materials Science. The awards ceremony will take place on November 2018. Congratulations!

The ICMAB has been awarded by the CSIC with the Gender Equality Certificate (Distintivo de Acreditación en Igualdad de Género), in its first edition. This certificate was promoted by the CSIC President, Rosa Menéndez, following an explicit commitment to offer equal opportunities for men and women in their workplaces. The objective of the call was to promote gender perspective in all the CSIC institutes, and to promote measures to eliminate the barriers that women may encounter during their career. 

Every year the CSIC acknowledges the staff members that have received awards or distinctions for their Scientific Merit from other institutions during the previous year. In this year's ceremony, held at the CSIC Auditorium in Madrid on June 28, 2018, they acknowledged Mariona Coll, from the ICMAB. 

On 3 July 2018, CaixaForum Barcelona hosted the ceremony to deliver the INPhINIT "la Caixa" doctorate program fellowships. The event was chaired by the Secretary of State for Universities, Research and Development, Ángeles Heras. Three Research Fellows, out of the 57 granted, have started their PhD at ICMAB: José Jurado from the USA, Milena Cervo Sulzbach from Brazil and Jan Grzelak from Poland.

Between 18 and 22 June 2018, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington (UK) hosted the 6th WMRIF Workshop for Early Career Scientists. From ICMAB, Roberta Verrelli, Francesca Leonardi and Ignasi Fina attended the workshop, which concentrated on exceptional early career scientists in World Materials Research Institute Forum (WMRIF) institutes with the goals of network building, and knowledge and experience exchange, along with the chance to examine facilities of the host institute. 

Three ICMAB researchers have been granted with a Ramon y Cajal grant from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.

Ignasi Fina, from the MULFOX group, in the area of Materials Science; Arántzazu González, from the FunNanoSurf group, in the area of Chemistry, and Judith Guasch, from the NANOMOL group, in the area of Biomedicine. Congratulations to all three!

Five ICMAB graduates from the PhD programme in Materials Science received the PhD Extraordinary Award for their doctoral thesis developed during the period 2014-2015. The award ceremony took place on May 18, 2018, at 6 pm, at the Hotel Campus UAB. Laura Cabana Jiménez, Pedro López-Aranguren Oliver, Nerea Murillo Cremaes, David Pesquera Herrero and Albert Queraltó López were recognised for their PhD dissertations.