Fairies

this year, Science is Wonderful! will take place online – through an array of innovative, interactive digital activities. The event will highlight some of the solutions Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and other EU-funded research and innovation projects are developing to address the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath, as well as the priorities that are at the core of both European and Global recovery efforts. The call for applications is now open! If you have an EU-funded project, you should be interested!

In 2020, the ICMAB will be present at the next edition of YoMo "Youth Mobile" conference (25-29 Feb 2020) with two activities around women in science: the dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", which visibilized women scientists of our history, and the talk "The hidden truth: Women behing the periodic table", which talks about the different periodic table elements that have been discovered by women and some curiosity around women and the chemical elements. Both activities will take place on Thursday, 27 February 2020 at La Farga de l'Hospitalet. 

This year, the Maker Faire Barcelona took place the weekend of 5-6 October in a new location: at the NAU BOSTIK, in the neighborhood of La Sagrera in Barcelona. The space was perfect for this kind of event, full of artists, inventors, creativity and sustainability. We felt really good there! From the ICMAB, Andrés Gómez and Anna May did two rounds of the workshop "Printing nanomaterials with 3Doodler" and gathered around 12-15 participants in each round. Thank you to the Maker Faire for counting on us!

The European Researchers’ Night, since its firs edition in 2005, brings science, technology and researchers closer to the general public on the last Friday of September. The ICMAB participated in this year's edition with talks, workshops and a dramatised lecture at the event organized at CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona, and in the CSIC "Residència d'Investigadors". 

During the European Researchers' Night celebrated on Friday, 27 September 2019 in Cosmocaixa Barcelona (Nit Jove de la Recerca), the representation of the dramatised lecture "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram Followers" was held (twice!) with a great amount of people in the audience! We could expland the knowledge of great women scientists to all those who came to see the Châtelet team in action!

During three days, between 20-22 May, the Pint of Science Festival, which brings science to bars and pubs, will take place in many cities of Spain. Vic will host this festival in La Jazz Cava, and Mariona Coll will be there the night of Wednesday, 22 May 2019. 

From 7 to 11 February, Barcelona will be the City of Science. The Biennal Ciència i Ciutat will fill the city with activities related with science: talks, debates, roundables, exhibitions, etc. The ICMAB will also participate by collaborating in two roundtables about Chemistry and Health, and Chemistry and Bateries (8 Feb, Cosmocaixa). You cannot miss it! Take a look at the extense programme, there is something for you, for sure!

This year, the 17th edition of the "Fira Recerca en Directe", organized by the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB) in collaboration with Obra Social "la Caixa", will count with the participation of the "Superconducting and Large Scale Nanostructures" group (SUMAN), which will show, among others, the levitating superconducting train. The science fair will take place at CosmoCaixa on 6-9 March 2019.

During three days, between 20-22 May, the Pint of Science Festival, which brings science to bars and pubs, will take place in many cities of Spain. Sant Cugat del Vallès will, for the first time, host this festival! The "Cal Temerari" bar will be full of science for three days!

The next edition of Pint of Science will take place on 20-22 May in many cities around Spain, including Barcelona.

On Wednesday 10 April 2019, the ICMAB will be at the XIV Business Forum "Fira d'Empreses" organized by the Faculty of Physics and the Faculty of Chemistry, with the participation of three more faculties, Mathematics and Computer Science, Earth Sciences and Biology. If you are a student or a researcher and would like to do an internship with us or work with us, come and visit us and we will inform you, from 10 am from 5 pm. 

The ICMAB research is present at the 10th International Postgraduate and Continuous Training Forum in Madrid in the CSIC stand (5E01). The forum opens its doors on 28-30 March from 10 am to 8 pm. If you are a student and/or a professional in the education field, here you will find endless options to expand your academic education: masters, doctorates, postgraduate studies, or language schools, in business schools, educational centers, universities, or research centers.

The 4th conference on "Business Women" repeated enue in Vilanova i la Geltrú, on Friday, 26 October. Imma Ratera, researcher at the NANOMOL group at ICMAB, participated in a roundtable about the role of women in the modern society. 

The dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers" will open this STEAM day, full of science and technology activities for girls, that will take place on Saturday, 17 November, in the "Biblioteca Vapor Badia" in Sabadell. After the "Châtelet" play, which features some female scientists of our history, a bunch of workshops will be hapenning. From ICMAB, Andrés Gómez will bring the "3D printing bridges" activity. 

This year, ICMAB will be present at EXPOMINER (9-11 November, Palau 1, Fira Barcelona), with more activities than ever! Come and listen to the amazing talks by our researchers on the color of minerals, boron for nanomedicine, quarts along our history, synchrotron radiation and magnetism! And in our stand, you will have the opportunity to play with cyrstals and diffraction, and visit the exhibiton "Matheroes: Supermaterials, the heroes of the future". Don't miss it!

From Monday 22 October the exhibition MATHEROES: Supermaterials, the hereos of the future will be at the ICMAB hall. During the days that the five Matheros will be here with us, some activities are organized: we will present the project to the UAB students, we will carry out a roundtable about the image of women in audiovisual content, and some of our researchers will offer guided visits for our support staff. 

On Saturday 29 September, the dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", which features the life and discoveries of several women scientists throughout history, was represented in the Library "Biblioteca Sagrada Família", Barcelona, at 1 pm, in the framework of the activities of the European Researchers' Night (Nit Europea de la Recerca), organised in Catalonia. 

On Friday, 28 September 2018, the ICMAB and most of the research centers in Catalonia, Spain and Europe, celebrated the 2018 European Researchers' Night (named "Nit Europea de la Recerca" in Catalonia). The ICMAB was at CosmoCaixa Barcelona from 7 pm until 11 pm for a night of nanoscience and nanotechnology workshops and a talk on spin currents! 

On Wednesday, 5 September, the ICMAB staff could bring their children, their grandchildren, and even their nephews and nieces to spend a morning at our centre full of scientific activities for another edition of the Kids Day!

In the end, more than 75 kids of ages between 1 and 17 joined us! Many volunteers from the ICMAB helped out during the day, organizing the activities and taking care of the kids. Thank you all for your great collaboration and participation!

The European Researchers' Night (Nit Europea de la Recerca) is celebrated throughout Europe on the last Friday of September, with the aim of bringing science, research and technology closer to the public. In Catalonia, under the theme "Research, heritage of all", outreach activities will take place on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 September in Barcelona, ​​Tarragona, Lleida, Girona, Blanes and Vic, among other places.

The ICMAB will participate with some highschool talks on Friday morning, with a nanoscience workshop and a Speaker's Cornet talk in CosmoCaixa on Friday evening, and in the Biblioteca Sagrada Família on Saturday morning with "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers".

On 16-17 June the ICMAB participated at the Barcelona Maker Faire. Many members of the NANOMOL group presented their research on encapsulation and hydrogels for biomedical applications. They used the spherification concept as a metaphor for the nanoencapsulation, and the gelification of agar agar for the hydrogels. The stand, which was always full of families and kids, obtained the Maker of Merit award, given by the organization to the best Makers of this year's edition. 

On 9-10 June 2018, ICMAB participated at the 12th edition of the Barcelona Science Festival with lots of activities. The festival counted with more than 230 activities in 33 different spaces distributed along the Ciutadella Park. 160 institutions (research centers, entities, associations, universities, individuals) participated in the event, organized by BCNCiència (Institut de Culgura de l'Ajuntament de Barcelona), and more than 20,000 attendees joined the festival during the weekend. 

Are you ready for a weekend full of science in an amazing venue in Barcelona? On June 9-10, many ICMAB researchers participate at the Barcelona Science Festival at Parc de la Ciutadella (Barcelona). Come with us and participate with your friends and family to the many activities prepared.

From ICMAB, Jordi Rius and Ashley Black will give two microtalks on crystalline structure of minerals and lithium-ion batteries, Martí Gibert will participate on a debate on how nanotechnology affects our life, Javier Repetto will talk about nanomedicine and the film Fantastic Voyage, and Anna May will be challenging the participants with a photonic contest and coordinating some of the events. 

Pint of Science, the festival that gathers people together in bars to listen to scientific presentations instead of watching a football match, has been a great success, with more than 20,000 participants around Spain. In Barcelona, 10 bars were hosting scientific talks during the three days of the festival (14, 15 and 16 May 2018). ICMAB was also represented, as we explained in a previous post: Javier Repetto in Casa Orlandai on Tuesday 15 May, and Irene Antonin Alfa Bar on Wednesday 16 May. 

Our traditional photo contest, FOTICMAB, is already a consolidated activity and receives every year a high participation. This year, we had three categories: scientific, artistic and "ICMAB moments". The artistic category was the one with the highest participation (48 photos), followed by our most favourite scientific category (19 photos) and the recovered "ICMAB moments" with 10 photos.

The winner of the scientific category is the photo you can see above; "Photonic leaf" by Cristiano Matricardi. "Rainbow", by Laia Soler won the artistic category, and "¡Con una sonrisa se trabaja mejor!" by Adriana Kyvik won the "ICMAB moments" category. The three winners are all PhD researchers at the Institute. The winner of each cateogory received a smartbox to enjoy a dinner for two. 

Let's see the story behind each one of the winning and finalist photos:

On April 11, 2018, the ICMAB was present at the XIII "Fira d'Empreses" or Business Forum, at the Universitat the Barcelona (UB), after some years of absence. This forum is designed to showcase job opportunities and career paths and attract students in the final stages of their university degree, and is organized by the Science and Engineering Departments of the UB (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science, Earth Sciences and Biology). 105 industries, research centers and universities participated in the event, which counted with the visit of more than 600 unversity students from sixteen degrees and twenty-two masters in these scientific areas. 

 The XIX Edition of ExpoRecerca Jove 2018 took place between 22 and 24 March in La Salle, Barcelona. Anna May, from ICMAB, participated as member of the jury of the presented projects by the talented groups of students from all over the world. 

Is is a great event in which the students present their pioneer and innovative projects, in many different fields: health, technology, biology, chemisty, arts & literature, robotics, etc. The students explain their projects to the jury members, and to all the visitors who wish to learn more about the future challenges of our world. 

Prof. Elies Molins, researcher at ICMAB and member of GISME (Interdisciplinary Reflection Group and Math Solutions for Entities), has collaborated in the creation of the exhibition 'Numbers and humanity' (Los números y la humanidad), which was exposed in the begining of 2018 at the UB, and on March this year at the "Saló de l'Ensenyament", next to the "Espai Ciència". Prof. Elies Molins is Scientific Director of the exhibition, together with Prof. Javier Tejada (GISME-UB), who is also the main organizer and curatior of the exhibition.

This year 2018 the ICMAB will be present like last year at "Expominer: Saló de minerals fòssils i joieria". The ICMAB will participate with a stand for some workshops for kids and families on minerals, materials and energy. In addition, some ICMAB researchers will give some science talks on different topics: magnetism, characterization of minerals using synchrotron light, optical properties of crystals, the history of borax (sodium borate), and quars. Don't miss the opportunity to visit one of the events with more minerals, fossils and jewelry of the world! A perfect place for school visits and families! 

After the success of the first edition in 2017 with more than 300 attendees, the second edition of BCNspiracy will taka place in CosmoCaixa Barcelona on 26-27 October 2018. This year, apart from the traditional talks BCNspiracy on science outreach, there will be a session on INspriacy (26 October), where secondary school students will have the opportunity to get inspired by young students who are studying their degree or are doing their PhD. On 27 October there will also be workshops and shows (PLAYspiracy) to show the interactive side of science, and a final networking event between speakers and audience, BEERspiracy.