Outreach

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!

On 15-16 November 2018, the members of the ICMAB Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) visited our Institute to scientifically evaluate the research lines and the overall performance of the Institute. In this year's visit, three research lines were evaluated: RL2: Superconductors for power applications; RL4: Molecular electronics; and RL5: Multifunctional nanostructured biomaterials.

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 programme A researcher in your classroom "Un investigador a la teva aula" brought Imma Ratera, researcher at the NANOMOL group, to the secondary highschool INS Alba del Vallès, in Sant Fost de Campsentelles (Vallès Oriental) on 18 October 2018.

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".

The "Societat Catalana de Química" (SCQ-IEC) organizes every year the contest on the best research chemistry projects for secondary school students (Premis als Treballs de Recerca de Batxillerat dins l'Àmbit de la Química). The award for the finalist students is a two-week scientific internship in a Catalan research center or university during July 2018. 

This year the ICMAB hosted seven (7) students from the program "Joves i Ciència" from Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera: Roger, Pilar, Antoni, Pere, Mariona, Anastasia and Arnau. They came to our Institute to do some research stays with some of our researchers, in the fields of spintronics, solar cells, superconducting materials, porous materials for energy, sustainable chemistry and crystallography. 

On Thursday, 5 July, the students participating at the ICFO School on Emerging Photovoltaics (2-6 July 2018) came to ICMAB from 3 to 6 pm to visit our research labs. The ICMAB researchers and PhD fellows guided the participants through the different labs and explained them the research performed in our Institute on photovoltaics, including organic solar cells, photonic crystals, perovskites, and oxide photovoltaic materials, and the equipment and facilities for materials characterization. 

On Wednesday, 30 May 2018, the ICMAB received the visit of the students belonging to the University Program FUB+GRAN, organized by the Fundació Universitària del Bages (UViC-UCC). The students of this program are all over 55 years old, and they all are curious minds and interested about all different kind of topics.

The ICMAB reserarchers Gil Gonçalves and Gerard Tobias are the editors of one of the most recent Springer books, Nanooncology: Engineering Nanomaterials for Cancer Therapy and Diagnosis. 

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. 

The Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera has developed the program "Bojos per la Ciència" to open the doors of the most relevant research institutes to the most excellent secondary school students. ICMAB joined in 2017 ICN2, IFAE and UAB for the second edition of "Bojos per la Física" and continued this year within this program, which has been a real success.

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. 

From 11 May 2018, the book from Wiley Editors "Boron-Based Compounds: Potential and Emerging Applications in Medicine", which is focused on the medical applications of boron-based compounds, will be available. Prof. Clara Viñas is one of the co-editors of the book, together with Prof. Evamarie Hey-Hawkins (Leipzig University).

In additon, both Prof. Clara Viñas and Prof. Francesc Teixidor have contributed to the book with a chapter on "Cobaltabisdicarbollide‐based Synthetic Vesicles: From Biological Interaction to in vivo Imaging". 

The program "A researcher in your classroom" brought Prof. Anna Roig to Lliçà d'Amunt, at Institut Lliçà (Tuesday, 3 February), and Dr. Agustín Mihi to Institut Dr. Puigvert de Sant Andreu in Barcelona (Wednesday, 4 February). Both audiences were secondary school students of 4t ESO.

 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. 

Two of our researchers, Dr. Esther Barrena, from the Physical Chemistry of Surfaces and Interfaces group, and Dr. Stefania Sandoval, from the Solid State Chemistry Group, went to two secondary school in the framework of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11F) and within the program "A researcher in your classroom" (Un investigador a la teva aula), to give two seminars on new materials for the future. 

On Friday, March 9 2018, one day after the International Women's Day, the students from 2n BTX of the high school Infanta Isabel in Barcelona visited our Institute.

A surprise awaited them: instead of having the usual seminar from one of our researchers, they had 12 researchers from the Institute waiting from them. But this 12 women did not give them a talk. Instead, they represented the play "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers".

On 27 and 28 February, the ICMAB was present at YoMo 2018, The Youth Mobile Festival, with an interactive stand open to all the primary and secondary school students who visited the Festival, and to all of their teachers. On Tuesday 27 February, the stand was devoted to the 3D printed structures with the 3D printing 3Doodler pens, by Andrés Gómez, from the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) lab. Both boys and girls gathered around the tables willing to build their bridge or the structure of a carbon nanotube with the 3D pens.

On Friday, 16 February, we received the visit of a class of 1st BTX students from Institut Joaquima Pla i Farreras (Sant Cugat) who came to learn about "The nanomaterials of the future for energy" and, particularly, those for batteries. Dr. Dino Tonti, from the Solid State Chemistry Group, gave a talk on nanotechnology, materials for energy and focused on batteries, and on his research on lithium and sodium batteries.