Outreach

We received a call from one of the students of 1st BTX of the Institut Marina, from La Llagosta. They wanted to visit us, since they had seen us at the "Fira de la Recerca en Directe" at CosmoCaixa Barcelona. So we agreed they would come and visit us. On Friday 24 May 2019 they came to the ICMAB to discover the "Materials of the future for energy" and to celebrate a EU Energy Day with us. 

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. 

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!

Clara Viñas, Rosario Núñez and Francesc Teixidor, from the Inorganic Materials and Catalysis Laboratory at ICMAB, and Isabel Romero, from the Universitat de Girona, co-authored the Wiley-VCH book "Smart Inorganic Polymers: Synthesis, Properties, and Emerging Applications in Materials and Life Sciences", in particular, the chapter "Highlighting the Binding Behavior of Icosahedral Boron Clusters Incorporated into Polymers: Synthons, Polymers Preparation, and Relevant Properties".

On 14 May 2019 we received the visit of Klaus Attenkofer, new Scientific Director of ALBA Synchrotron at the Experiments Division since 4 March 2019. Klaus Attenkofer was received by our Director, Xavier Obradors, by our Vicedirector, M. Rosa Palacín, and by the Head of the Scientific Equipment Platforms, Carlos Frontera.

To celebrate this year's Europe Day, we wanted to give visibility to the European projects in which we work here at ICMAB, which represent some of the work performed at the Institute on advanced functional materials for energy, electronics and nanomedicine. Do you want to know more about them?

Register before it's too late! The dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", which recently received a Grant from FGCSIC, will open the Conference Cycle organized by Alumni UB "Dones de ciència retrobades en la història". The dramatised reading will take place on Monday, 29 April at 6 pm at the "Sala Gabriel Oliver" (Facultat de Filologia, Edifici Històric UB). Entrace is free but registration is needed. 

At the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB) we celebrate Sant Jordi 2019 with the second edition of the Book Exchange. This year, we also included two bookmarks to give as a souvenir to all our staff.

A new edition of the photo and video contest of the ICMAB, FOTICMAB 2019, is now open, until 26 May 2019 (included). All the ICMAB staff can participate in this contest, which is already a tradition of our Institute!

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. 

Ferran Macià, researcher at ICMAB in the MULFOX group has been selected to participate in the Spanish edition of the international science outreach programme “I’m a scientist, get me out of here!”. The 2019 edition of “Somos científicos, ¡Sácanos de aquí!” takes place from 1-12 April 2019. During this time, Ferran will chat in a multidisciplinary group of scientists – the CSIC zone – that includes researchers from other CSIC centres.

On Friday, 29 March 2019, the "Matheroes: Supermaterials, the materials of the future" were presented for a school class of students aged 11-12 (6è Primària) from Sabadell in the Ponent Library in Sabadell (Biblioteca de Ponent). Núria Crivillers, Juan-Luís García-Pomar and Anna May Masnou, presented some of the supermaterials and their properties and applications.

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.

On Wednesday, 27 March 2019, we received the visit of Engineering Undergraduate students from the Escola Universitària Salesiana de Sarrià (EUSS) (Salesian University School of Sarrià). The EUSS is a center afiliated to the UAB created in 1994 and located in Barcelona. Xavier Obradors gave a first overview to the ICMAB research and then the students could visit some of our labs.

On Monday, 18 March, the meeting "Science and Research in the Agenda 2030" (Ciencia e Investigación en la Agenda 2030) took place in La Moncloa (Madrid), with the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Pedro Duque, and the High Comissioner for the Agenda 2030, Cristina Gallach. The CSIC President, Rosa Menéndez, participated in the event, and Mariano Campoy-Quiles, from ICMAB-CSIC, attented the event, together with 150 representatives of the science, research and innovation field in Spain. 

On Friday, 15 March 2019, the secondary school INS Mercè Rodoreda (Hospitalet de Llobregat) celebrated their "V Scientific Day" (V Jornada Científica) with scientific activities for their students, from 1st ESO to 2nd BTX. José Vidal-Gancedo, Reseracher at ICMAB, was one of the invited speakers. He had the big challenge of talking about "Organic radicals for biomedical applications" to 3rd and 4th ESO students. 

The CSIC Delegation in Catalunya wants to contribute to the promotion of scientific vocations in young girls, and facilitate the contact between them and the scientists from the nearby research centers. For this reason, an educational action in the framework of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11 February) is organized, consisting on school visits by some CSIC researchers, who will explain their research projects and their life as a scientist to primary school students.

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!

Xavier Obradors, ICMAB Director, gave a talk to the CMES group (Col·lectiu per a un Nou Model Energètic i Social Sostenible) on February 4, 2019. You can watch here the entire conference, which is on Youtube:

On Friday, 1 February 2019, students from the Centre d'Estudis Roca school, in Barcelona, came to the ICMAB to discover the materials of the future in solar energy! The visit consisted in a first talk from Mariano Campoy-Quiles, researcher at the ICMAB, followed by a visit to four different labs: SEM, XRD, AFM and NANOPTO labs. The visit is in the framework of the ESCOLAB programme of the Ajuntament de Barcelona. 

A broad and comprehensive review on thermoelectric materials has been published in "Materials Science and Engineering: R: Reports", a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier established in 1993 with an impact factor of more than 25! The review, with 47 pages, includes the participation of Mariano Campoy-Quiles and Bernhard Dörling from the ICMAB-CSIC, and 12 more institutions around the world (Italy, USA, UK, Germany, Sweden and Spain). 

Jordi Faraudo, researcher at the Materials Simulation and Theory Department from ICMAB, is the Guest Editor of this Special Issue of the MDPI Entropy journal devoted to "Thermodynamics and Entropy for Self-Assembly and Self-Organization". The Deadline for manuscripts submissions is 31 July 2019. 

On Wednesday, 12 June 2019, a new session on the "Quantum" exhibition at the CCCB. A session in which the lines of research of the ALBA Synchrotron that use quantum principles, and two experiments carried out, are presented as an example of the possibilities it has in this field. With Salvador Ferrer (ALBA), Gervasi Herranz (ICMAB), and Jordi Fraxedas (ICN2).

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.

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

Within the programme "A researcher in your classroom" (Un investigador a la teva aula), researchers from the ICMAB can spend a class at one secondary or primary school and show the students what it is like to be a scientist and the research in nanomaterials performed at our Institute. 

On Friday, 14 December 2018, 25 secondary school students from the "Escola Vedruna Gràcia" visited the ICMAB thanks to the ESCOLAB programme. The students, all from the scientific branch, could enjoy a talk on "Nanomaterials for nanomedicine" by Anna Laromaine, from the NN group, and then visiti some of our Scientific Services.

On Tuesday, 27 November 2018, we had a very special visit in our Institute: "the scientists" class formed by 24 six-year old students from "La Trama" school in Sabadell visited us. It was a fantastic visit. All the kids were very happy to become real scientists for a day, and to visit the laboratories, the clean room, the glove boxes, the microscopes and even to perform an X-ray diffraction experiment to discover what is sand made of. 

During two mornings, 12 and 13 November 2018, the ICMAB hosted the workshop for secondary school students "Become a materials detective" (Converteix-te en un detectiu de materials) to celebrate the Science Week 2018. Four classes of 2nd ESO from the IES Vallès (Sabadell) came to ICMAB by train and became scientists for a day. 

On Thursday 25 October, the students from 2n BTX from the "Col·legi Maristes de Montserrat" (Lleida) took the bus and came to our center to spend an afternoon learning about nanotechnology and supermaterials! They could enjoy the visit of the "Matheroes" exhibition, a talk from one of our researchers, and a visit to our installations.

Arántzazu González, Ramon y Cajal researcher at ICMAB and participant of the program "A Researcher in your classroom" was at two primary schools in November, in the framework of the "Science Week" to show the students what is a scientist and what type of research we do at the ICMAB.

On 26 October 2018, Anna Laromaine participated in the project "Ciencia y Tecnología en femenino", organized by the Asociación de Parques Científicos y Tecnológicos de España (APTE) and with the support of Bayer, which took place at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB). The project consisted of a whole morning of science talks, workshops and a visit to the exhibition "Women that changed the world" for secondary school students. 

A new book has just been released to the market. It is a science book about light, but not just that, it is a book about experiments to play with light "Descubriendo la luz: experimentos divertidos de óptica". Juan Luís García Pomar, researcher at ICMAB, is co-author of the book.. We have interviewed him to know more about the book and the interesting optical phenomena associated, such as invisibility! If you want to know more, continue reading!