Outreach

Face masks are still one of the key factors helping us face the current COVID-19 pandemic, and have been part of the conversation since the first responses to the virus started to appear. The other key factor is physical distancing. In this Online ICMAB Seminar, Jan Grzelak, from the Nanoparticles & Nanocomposites (NN) Group, presents the current knowledge we have on the materials used to create the masks and their reusability.

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!

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 the session had to be online, due to the coronavirus pandemic, and finally the 25 students could join researchers Ignasi Fina and Jordi Faraudo and Anna May, coordinating the event, on an online session during more than 4 hours on Saturday, 13 June 2020, in the morning. 

Gaudeamus Igitur is a traditional anthem for students all over Europe, played in many graduations and commemorative events. This tradition is kept alive in our institution thanks to the ICMAB Choir, who sings this hymn to all of their members once they become doctors. Do you want to know its origin?

This year the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Festival 10alamenos9 was cancelled, due to the coronavirus. However, another initiative in the framework of the festival appeared: the short talks (around 20 minutes) about nanoscience and nanotechnology through YouTube, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 12 pm, called "Vermut de Nanociència" (Nanoscience Vermouth). On 3 June 2020 Irene Anton made her contribution, explaining the curious facts of one day of a PhD researcher in this field. 

Stefania Sandoval participated during two weeks in May in the initiative We are Scientists, get us out of here! in which she answered questions from primary and secondary school students eager to learn more about the job of a scientist and science itself. Stefania had a great experience, which she wants to share with us all. Read here what she has learnt from it and has taken as a take-home message!

Nerea Murugarren, Biochemisry Bachelor's Degree student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), has prepared a video entitled "BACTERIA: a nanobiotechnology factory for biomedicine" as part of her Final Degree Project. The idea came from all that she learnt during her stay at the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites (NN) Group at the ICMAB. 

This year the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Festival 10alamenos9 was cancelled, due to the coronavirus. However, another initiative in the framework of the festival appeared: the short talks (around 20 minutes) about nanoscience and nanotechnology through YouTube, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 12 pm, called "Vermut de Nanociència" (Nanoscience Vermouth). Anna Roig, and Judit Morlà participated in the initiative!

Sant Jordi will be a slightly different experience this year, but that does not mean that we shouldn not celebrate it. At the ICMAB we wanted to focus on one of the most important parts of this festivity: books!

What was your one constant excuse for almost everything that you have always wanted to do? To begin with, let me be honest about mine, it was this: “But, I don't have time for that!” or “Yes I would love to. But where is the time?” Well, now we have answer to all those “but's”. The time is here. So, are you ready? During this testing time in history, I would like to shift the focus a little bit and see it from a different perspective…

The last issue of the journal of the Catalan Chemical Society (Revista de la Societat Catalana de Química) includes two articles from ICMAB researchers. The first one is about graphene oxide nanocomposites decorated with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, and the second one is about the European project "Smart-4-Fabry", which develops a new nanomedicine for the treatment of the Fabry disease. The articles are written in Catalan. We encourage you to have a look at them!

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three great scientists for the developement of Li-ion batteries. The Catalan Chemical Society (SCQ) wanted to dedicate this year's Christmas Conference to this fact, and invited M. Rosa Palacín to give the keynote lecture on this topic. The event took place on Thursday, 19 December 2019 at the IEC (Institut d'Estudis Catalans), in Barcelona. 

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. 

The Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC), together with many research centers and universities, including the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB), have initiated an art project that will represent in a different way thw world of nanotechnology: NANOCAEDRE. Susagna Ricart, from the ICMAB, participates in this project with her expertise in the superconducting phenomena. The presentation of the project will take place at the Basilica Sants Màrtirs Just i Pastor (Barcelona), on Tuesday, 10 December, at 7 pm.

A new protocol from Gervasi Herranz and the MULFOX group at ICMAB shows how magnetic fields can change the propagation of light in confined nanostructured materials and reveal enhanced optical responses. This new protocol is published as a VIDEO-ARTICLE at the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). The new protocol allows to directly study how magnetization changes the photonic response.

The Châtelet team is in YouTube! Thanks to the funding received by the FGCSIC call "Cuenta la Ciencia", we have been able to produce this video and share it with you! Please feel free to share it with your contacts! 

During the Science Week (Setmana de la Ciència) 2019, which was between the 8 and 17 of November 2019, the ICMAB received the visit of 4 schools, which amounted a total of 185 students. The students could attend the "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", visit some of our labs and participate in the workshops about "Properties of the Minerals and Periodic Table Elements". 

During the Science Week 2019, in November, six of our researchers brought scientific research closer to the young students aged 15-17 years old within the framework of the programme "A researcher in your classroom". They went to five different highschools and gave a talk to the students, who had the opportunity to learn more about nanoscience and nanotechnology and about what is it like to be a scientist.

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!

The new edition of the scientific photography contest FOTCIENCIA is now open! The aim of this initiative, organised by the CSIC and the FECYT, is to bring science and technology closer to society. The participants have until 16 December 2019 to send their photographies! Good luck!

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!

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. 

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 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!

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. 

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.