Outreach

Martí Gibert, PhD researcher at the NANOPTO group, participated on Friday, 8 November 2019, on the YouTube Science Truck programme, in which the main topic was Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and the invited scientific youtuber was Anna Morales (Size Matters), who is working on her PhD in Switzerland. Martí talked about Organic Solar Cells and Nanostructures! You can listen him from minute 53:24 to minute 1:02. Well done, Martí!

Elies Molins has given lectures at the International Conference on Materials Science (ICMS), at the Center for Applied Nanotechnology (CNAP) and at the Universidad Autonoma de Chile. His conferences have been about porous materials and their applications in catalysis and medicine. 

We have a new Helium Liquefier! With the new ATL 160 QuantumDesign equipment, we will be able to satisfy between 90-95 % of our Helium needs (now we were around 60 %). We use liquid Helium at the Low Temperatures and Magnetometry Service, since magnetic measurements are carried out at extremely low temperatures (5 K!). Liquid Helium is used as a refrigerant. 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 was awarded on October 9, 2019, jointly to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries. At the ICMAB we are very happy for this award, for several reasons: Josep Fontcuberta was a former postdoc fellow of Goodenough, in Oxford; and Goodenough was once a member of our Scientific Advisory Board! Moreover, M. Rosa Palacín, researcher in the batteries field, has met all three of them, and has continued their work, developing post lithium-ion batteries at the ICMAB! In this post, both researchers have written some words on this matter! Continue reading!

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!

Wiley celebrates the International Year of the Periodic Table with an interactive Periodic Table of books devoted to each one of the elements! In the case of Boron, the featured book is "Boron-Based Compounds: Potential and Emerging Applications in Medicine" edited by Evamarie Hey-Hawkins and Clara Viñas Teixidor. 

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!

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". 

In the morning of Thursday, 26 September 2019, Judith Morlà, TecnioSpring researcher at the Nanomol Group, and Andrés Gómez, Senior Technician at the Scanning Probe Microscopy Lab, became "A researcher in your classroom": they went to give some science talks to two high schools, in the framework of the European Researchers' Night. 

To celebrate the 20th anniversaty of the CSIC "Residència d'Investigadors" in Barcelona, the institution has prepared the document "Reptes globals: perspectives des de la Ciència" (Global challenges: perspectives from Science), in which different experts in several fields explain how they see some of the most important challenges that our society is facing. From the ICMAB, Xavier Obradors writes about "Advanced Functional Nanomaterials: the key for the fourth Industrial Revolution". The document is available in Spanish and Catalan. 

Naukas Bilbao is one of the greatest event in Science Communication in Spain. This year the 9th edition of Naukas will take place in Bilbao, from 19 to 22 September 2019, at the Palacio Euskalduna, which can host an audience of more than 2,000 people! This year, the Nanomol Group researcher Dolores Bueno, will give a talk about the project in which she is participating, Smart4Fabry. The talk is entitled "Share your rare!" and will be on Friday, 20 September, at 11:10 am. Good luck, Dolores!

Elies Molins participated in the creation of the exhibition "Energía: origen y final del todo", which was exhibited at Laboratorium Museum in Bergara (Basque Country) from January to May 2019. The curators and designers were Carlota Oliver, Javier Tejada (Universitat de Barcelona) and Elies Molins (ICMAB-CSIC). 

The CSIC Annual Report 2018 is now online. You can find information about the 120 research centers and units, 1,597 research groups, and 10,642 total staff. The ICMAB article "Hydroxypropyl cellulose photonic architectures by soft nanoimprinting lithography" (Nature Photonics 12, 343 (2018)) appears as one of the highlights in the Materials Science and Technology area. 

The studies "Synchrotron tts-µXRD identification of secondary phases in ancient ceramics" published in Heritage Science, and "Breaking Preconceptions: Thin Section Petrography For Ceramic Glaze Microstructures" published in Minerals are now featured in UABDivulga. These two articles, in which researchers from the UAB and the ICMAB have collaborated, refute the common perception of thin-sections as an old-fashioned laboratory preparation and show how this sample format conceived in the 19th century is still in force and can be adapted to the research and the new tools of the 21st century, such as the synchrotron facilities.

Mariano Campoy-Quiles is an invited speaker at this ICN2 Severo Ochoa Workshop on energy storage and harvesting entitled "Energy Mining in the 21st century". The event will take place at the CCCB-Mirador on Friday, 12 July 2019. To attend the event, please contact the organizers.

M. Rosa Palacín was on Thursday, 11 July 2019, in Madrid at the conference organized by EL PAÍS, CincoDías and Cadena SER about the future of electric cars "Los retos del coche eléctrico". The event counted with the presence of Teresa Ribera (Ecologic Transition Minister), Reyes Maroto (Industry, Commerce and Turism Minister), José Bogas (Endesa) and Luis Antonio Ruiz (Jaguar Land Rover), and other experts in engineering and materials science. 

Clara Viñas and Francesc Teixidor, from the Inorganic Materials and Catalysis Book, have written Chapter 5 of Volume 1 of the "Handbook of Boron Science". The chapter is entitled: "Halogenated Icosahedral Carboranes: A Platform for Remarkable Applications". The handbook counts with 4 volumes, the first one being "Boron in Organometallic Chemistry". The handbook is edited by Narayan S Hosmane (Northern Illinois University, USA) andRobert Eagling.

Iif you are in the science field, you probably receive every week plenty of spam emails asking you to write an article for this or that journal, or to go to this or that conference. Usually, these emails are easy to spot, and they are quickly thrown on the trash folder. However, is there a way to properly detect them? And to fight them? Read this article by Mariano Campoy-Quiles (and with an original illustration by Alejandro Santos) to know how.

Xavier Obradors participated on June 19, 2019, on a roundtable about the "Energy of the future" in the framework of the European Week of Sustainable Energy in Vil·la Urània (Barcelona). Obradors gave an introductory talk on "Nanotechnology and Energy Transition" and then participated in the discussion with the other experts in the field from different research centers and organisations. 

On June 18, 2019, the winners of the ESCOLAB contest "Tenim una idea" were revealed. In the category "Idees to improve the health and nurition of the citizens" an idea to "develop an injectable chemical substance based on nanoparticles to regenerate bones in a quick and efficient way" was the winner. The idea came from Aina Vilar and Carlota Garcia, from the "Escola Pia de Granollers" who visited us last 10 May 2019, to learn about "The materials of the future for nanomedicine" with researcher Nora Ventosa. Congrats!

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 humoristic. The artistic category was the one with the highest participation (27 photos), followed by our most favourite scientific category (12 photos) and a humoristic category, with (only) 5 photos. We also received one video in the ClowntICMAB video category! 

Anna Morales, alias SizeMatters in YouTube, is a Researcher in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and a YouTuber. She owns the channel "SizeMatters", which is a nanoscience and nanotechnology channel in Spanish. In her last video, she explains the concepts of nanotechnology in some Marvel superheroes, and also in our Matheroes: ElectroWoman, Magnon, Bionanocapsule and Fotoenergy! 

Energy Days are organised by local public and private organisations to celebrate the EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) 2019, organised by the European Commission, between 17-21 June 2019. Energy Days are activities and events that promote clean energy transition. Any activity can be an Energy Day – from a workshop, to a competition, to a tour of a power station – provided it engages citizens and energy stakeholders in building the Energy Union. At the ICMAB, our Energy Day will be on June 17, 2019, with the ICMAB Periodical Lecture given by Jordi Llorca, on Hydrogen!

On Wednesday, 12 June 2019, the Quantum exhibition at CCCB received the visit of three scientists working in Quantum research at the ALBA Synchrotron: Gervasi Herranz, from the ICMAB, Salvador Ferrer, from ALBA, and Jordi Fraxedas, from the ICN2. The three researchers talked to an audience of about 40 people about their quantum experiments at the ALBA synchrotron. 

The Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera develops the program "Bojos per la Ciència" to open the doors of the most relevant research institutes to the most excellent secondary school students. The ICMAB joined in 2017 the initiative "Bojos per la Física" coordinated by the ICN2, and the IFAE. This year, Ignasi Fina and Jordi Faraudo were in charge of showing piezoelectricity and molecular simulation to the students. 

The Material-ES scientific magazine is published every three months by the Spanish Materials Society (SOCIEMAT). They are always looking for authors that would like to publish an article with them. Written works in Spanish and English will be accepted. Once received, they will be scheduled for publication in the next issues.

On 5 June 2019 we celebrate the World Environment Day to encourage worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. Since it began in 1974, the event has grown to become a global platform for public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries. The event called "Environment and Society" is organized at IDAEA-CSIC. Nora Ventosa, researcher at the ICMAB and vice-president of the SCQ, will open the event, which has the Periodic Table as main theme, and in which all the speakers are women scientists!

On June 4 the final event of Nanoinventum will take place at the Faculties of Chemistry and Biology of the University of Barcelona. Primary school students and their teachers from 5 different schools, involving more than 200 students, will present the work in nanorobots that they have carried out this year. They will also interview Anna Roig (ICMAB) and Mercè Segarra (UB) to know more about the life of a scientist. 

This year the ICMAB has participated for the third time in the seventh edition of the University Programme FUB+GRAN "Saber per descobrir", organized by the Fundació Universitària del Bages (UVIC-UCC), and addressed to people of more than 55 years old, who have interest in learning more. On Wednesday, 29 May 2019, the students came to visit the ICMAB to see some of our scientific and technical services.