Events

Dates: 30 May – 1 June 2023

AMSIC leadership is pleased to announce that the Algeria-France bilateral and international Workshop addressing Emerging Separation Technologies for Water Treatment and Air Filtration will be held in Algiers, May 30-June 1, 2023.

This event is jointly organized by

• ANVREDET (host institution, Algeria’s national agency of technology transfer)
• Institut Europeen des Membranes (IEM) and Chaire of UNESCO-SIMEV, in France
• African Membrane Society

Speakers and panelists who will contribute can view the Technical Program in the “Catalogue Complet…” document.

This event is chaired by Dr Nadjib DROUICHE, ANVREDET General Director; and Dr Wassila BOULAICHE who’s leading ANVERDET’ Innovation division has been coordinating the overall effort.  She attended the Q&A session during our last general AMSIC meeting.

Last but not least, other AMSIC members, Prof Raja BEN AMAR, Prof Marc HERAN and Dr Sara OUALI have played a significant role in creating the content for this ambitious program.   

A special thank goes to UN Project Manager Soumana GAGARA (Zou) for making the effort to join us, despite a very busy schedule.

We are fully indebted to all AMSIC members in/from Algeria and elsewhere who will be contributing to this workshop in Algiers.

View the catalogue with programme
View the flyer 

Date: 26 May 2023

Talk: Frugal Science: Exploring Sub-Nanometer Scales using Droplets

Speaker: Martin Thuo

Abstract

Liquids on surfaces, either as droplets or adsorbed films, embody both complexity and simplicity and, are erroneously portrayed as information poor or worse as an inconvenience. Thermodynamically, however, droplets capture surface force balance hence are a fascinating tool in understanding sub-nanometer surface structures. This talk will highlight how a simple relation of Gibbs free energy between a droplet and a self-assembled monolayer can be used to reveal gaps in our understanding of these ‘simple’ systems. From the original work by Jacob Sagiv, the Whitesides-Porter discrepancy, to understanding superhydrophobic surfaces, we will explore the chemistry, challenges, and opportunities for new advances. Understanding the free energy minimized state of a droplet, we reveal complex interactions at the single carbon-carbon bond level and related conformational dynamics at the interface. Complimentary studies through surface sensitive sum-frequency generation and molecular electronics lead to strong indication that droplets are information rich under felicitous choice of conditions. This is an ultimate demonstration of frugal nanoscience!

Besides their use as probes, liquid droplets are also good synthons for nanomaterials synthesis. This will be highlighted through a discussion on liquid-derived synthons for graphene-coated metal oxides. Utilizing droplets, we synthesize materials that are otherwise challenging to make.

Biography

Martin Thuo is a Professor in the Departments of materials science & engineering at North Carolina state University and a co-host of the ICANX talks. Prior to NCSU, he was the Schafer professor at Iowa State University. He was also a Mary-Fieser (2009-2011) and NSEC (2011-2013) post-doctoral Fellow at Harvard University. He is the recipient of several awards including the ACS nano rising star, MSE excellence in research award, Lynn-Anderson research excellence award, Black & Veatch faculty fellowship, among others. His research interests encompass the general theme of frugal innovation through surface and interface thermodynamics.

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Dates: 12-15 June 2023

Theme: Magnifying the Solution

Similar to previous chapters (South African – 2020, East African – 2021 and West Africa – 2022), we will be running the North Africa – International Microscopy Workshop 2023 in an online format from the 12th – 15th of June 2023. Although the selected topics are based on a microscopy survey run in North Africa, we would like to invite all Postgraduate students, Researchers, Microscopists, Trade representatives and Scientific community from Africa and beyond. For more information of the previous international workshops and our activities, please visit our website: https://inmic.africa/

Topics that will be covered in the workshop include: Light Microscopy (LM) and Stereomicroscopy (SM), Laser Confocal Scanning Microscopy (LCSM), SEM (EBSD, BSE, SE, CL and FIB), TEM (STEM, SAED and HAADF-STEM), Scanning Probe Microscopy (e.g. AFM), Spectroscopy Supporting techniques (Raman,  Optical Spectroscopy and XRD-SAXS), Sample preparation techniques, Image analysis, as well as a few other suggested topics.

Student participation prizes worth 1000 USD are up for grabs.

Only registered participants will receive the details of the Zoom Conference webinar links to the different workshop sessions on the 7th of June, 2023.

Registration Deadline: 2 June 2023

Register at https://forms.office.com/r/chGuW3srW1 Please note this is a Free registration

View the flyer for more information

Date: 23 May 2023

Talk1: Scalable and Deterministic Templated Manufacturing of Micro- and Nanoscale Metallic Structures for Flexible and Biomedical Applications

Speaker: Wen-Di Li

Abstract

Deterministically fabricated metallic micro- and nanostructures play key roles in emerging optical and electronic devices. For example, metal grids with micro-sized linewidth are adopted as transparent electrodes in touch panels. Nanoscale noble metal disks and holes are used for plasmonic sensing of trace amounts of chemicals. The recent development in metamaterials and metasurfaces also heavily relies on metallic structures with deep-sub-micron sizes. Metallic electrodes down to microscale sizes hold the promise of interfacing the biological domain with electronics. Fabricating these metallic structures in a deterministic, reproducible, and scalable way is essential and fundamental for the development and wide adoption of the aforementioned functional devices. Conventional fabrication of metallic micro- and nanostructures mainly involves vacuum-based processes such as sputtering, evaporation, etc. These vacuum processes are typically expensive and time-consuming, and moreover, the thickness of metal deposited is usually limited. In this report, we will introduce our solution-processed scalable manufacturing strategy, which is based on templated electrodeposition and transfer, for fabricating metallic micro- and nanostructures on versatile rigid and flexible substrates, or even in a freestanding form, and demonstrate relevant device applications. This talk will also briefly introduce our progress on large-scale nanopatterning using laser interference and the development of commercial nanopatterning equipment products, as the enabling platform that supports our deterministic fabrication of metallic nanostructures.

Biography

Dr. Wen-Di Li is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, leading the Nanofabrication and Nanodevice Laboratory. Before joining HKU, Dr. Li received his bachelor’s and PhD degrees from Tsinghua University and Princeton University, respectively, and carried out post-doctoral research on advanced lithography for next-generation nanoelectronics at Hewlett-Packard Labs. His research interests mainly focus on high-resolution and scalable lithographic patterning and micro/nanofabrication techniques, such as sub-10 nm helium-ion-beam lithography, nanoimprint lithography, laser interference lithography, etc.,  from their fundamental mechanisms, process and instrumentation development, to practical applications in functional devices. The innovations from his team have been awarded gold medals twice at the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions and licensed to spin-off companies, to commercialize flexible electronic devices and nanopatterning equipment, respectively.

Talk2: Magnetism-coupled Flexible Devices

Speaker: Bingpu Zhou

Abstract

The emergence of flexible and wearable electronics is now leading a revolutionary era for real-time healthcare monitoring and human-machine interaction (HMI) in a more convenient and authentic manner. Sensors, as the bridge between human being and electrical terminals, are playing an important role to facilitate the interaction with the complex environment and promote the healthy development of our society. It is thus crucial to develop the high-performance flexible sensors for precise and effective conversion of multiple physiological signals from human beings. In this presentation, we will firstly introduce our recent studies of magnetism-coupled flexible sensors that aims to improve the sensing performance of flexible devices from linearity, sensitivity, to potential working range. Furthermore, taking advantage of the intrinsic “divergence” and “curl” property of magnetic vector, we will present that the coupling of magnetized component to flexible sensors can possibly enrich the function for future HMI and healthcare sensing. The design principle and optimization mechanism will be discussed in details.

Biography

Bingpu Zhou obtained his PhD degree from HKUST in 2015. He is currently an Associate Professor of Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering in University of Macau. Dr. Zhou also serves as the Associate Department Head of Department of Physics and Chemistry in Faculty of Science and Technology, and the Joint Assistant Professor in Function Hub at HKUST (GZ). Dr. Zhou is recipient of several grants including FDCT (Macau SAR), GDST (Guangdong, China) and FDCT-GDST joint projects. His group is mainly focusing on the optimization of novel flexible sensors with magnetism-mechanics-coupled effect, and functional surface/interface analysis. Some of the work have been published in Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, ACS Nano, and Nano Energy, etc. as first/corresponding author.

Talk3: Bioinspired small robotics for biomedical engineering

Speaker: Yajing Shen

Abstract

Micro/nano robots have attracted extensive interest in biomedical engineering owing to their great potential to work inside the body for diagnosis, drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and so on. In this talk, I’d like to share my ideas on the design and application of the bioinspired small robot for biomedical applications. This talk will start with a brief review of the development of micro/nano robotics followed by the trade-off and challenges to apply them in biomedical engineering. Then, I will introduce some potential solutions/efforts to address these existing challenges by giving some examples in our Lab, including the swimming microrobot, walking robot, and so on. I’d also like to share my own perspective on robotics and intelligence in biomedical engineering and discuss them with the audience.

Biography

Dr. Yajing Shen received the Ph.D. degree in 2012 and he is currently working as an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is also the director of the research center for smart manufacturing and a member of the robotics institute at HKUST. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, an Executive member of China Micro-nano Robotic Society, and the Associate Editor of IEEE Trans on Robotics (2019-22). Dr. Yajing’s main research interest is small/bioinspired robotics, intelligent systems, and their applications in biomedical engineering. He has published ~100 peer-reviewed journals/conferences, including the top multidisciplinary journal (e.g., Science Robotics, Nature Communications, PNAS), top specialized journal (e.g., IEEE Trans on Robotics), top international conference (e.g., ICRA, IROS), with widely reported by international media, e.g., Associated Press, Thomson Reuters, etc. Dr. Yajing has received serval academic awards, including the Best Manipulation Paper Award in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in 2011, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Japan Chapter Young Award in 2011, the Early Career Awards of Hong Kong UGC in 2014, and the Big-on-Small Award at MARSS 2018. He also received the “National Excellent Young Scientist Fund (Hong Kong & Macau)” for the topic “micro/nano robot” in 2019.

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Date: 19 May 2023

Talk: Green Data Communication: The Next Challenge after 5G

Speaker: Dieter Bimberg

Abstract

Since 2014 novel consumer applications like Netflix, Block Chain,… not known to appear at the horizon at that time have led to a huge increase of internet traffic of 60%/year, much more than then originally predicted by companies like Cisco. This increased use of the internet is increasing its electrical power consumption due to increased data traffic mostly inside data centers. New data centers have crossed the 500 MW level. 5G with its big jump in data speed will be another enabler for new services, like LIDAR and more we cannot think about yet, and will increase the energy consumption to an extent not further tolerable. More research has to be done on the energy-efficiency of data traffic on all hierarchy levels.

Inside data centers advanced design of active optical cables, their electronic driver and receiver circuits and the active photonic devices are suddenly in the focus, with the goal to minimize their combined power consumption. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for 200+ Gbit/s single fiber data transmission across OM5 multimode fiber with a record heat to bit rate ratio (HBR) of only 240 fJ/bit x wavelength @ 50Gbit/s developed in our labs are presented.

We recently discovered photon lifetime management to be the key to adopt the overall energy consumption to the bit rate of the data traffic (e.g. 25 Gb/s, 50 Gb/s,..). Completely novel GaAs VCSEL designs based on oxidizing apertures from dry etched holes filled subsequently with metal are presented.  Much better heat dissipation leads to much larger saturation currents, larger output power and larger 3 dB cut-off frequencies. Single mode multiplexing and easy polarized emission is enabled. The novel approach is covered by multiple worldwide patents.

Biography

Dieter Bimberg received the Ph.D. magna cum laude from Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. He held a Principal Scientist position at the Max Planck-Institute for Solid State Research, Grenoble, France, until 1979. After serving as a Professor of electrical engineering, Technical University of Aachen, Germany, he assumed the Chair of Applied Solid-State Physics at Technical University of Berlin. He is the Founding Director of its Center of Nanophotonics. He hold guest professorships at the Technion, Haifa, U.C. Santa Barbara, CA, USA, and at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, CA. He was Distinguished Adjunct Professor at KAU, Jeddah 2012-2018. In 2018 he assumed the directorship of the “Bimberg Chinese German Center for Green Photonics” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at CIOMP, Changchun.

He is a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the EU Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the US Academies of Engineering and of Inventors, a Life Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE, and a fellow of Chinese Optical Society. He is recipient of multiple international awards, like the UNESCO Nanoscience Award, the Max-Born Award and Medal of IoP and DPG, the Heinrich-Welker-Award, the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, the Oyo Buturi and MOC Awards of the Japanese Society of Applied Physics, the Jun-Ichi Nishizawa Medal and Award of IEEE, and the Stern-Gerlach Award of DPG, to mention a few. He received honorary doctorates of the University of Lancaster, UK, and the St. Petersburg University of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He has authored more than 1500 papers, 71 patents and present applications, and six books. The number of times his research works has been cited exceeds 67,000 and his Hirsch factor is 113. His research interests include physics and technology of nanostructures, nanostructured photonic and electronic devices, and energy efficient data communication.

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Date: 16 May 2023

Talk1：Angstrom-scale channels made from 2D materials: Molecular Transport

Speaker: Radha Boya

Abstract

Understanding molecular transport in nano/angstrom scale channels has practical relevance in applications such as membrane desalination, blue energy, supercapacitors and batteries, as well as in understanding ionic flow through biological channels. Synthetic Å-channels are now a reality with the emergence of several cutting-edge bottom-up and top-down fabrication methods. In particular, the use of atomically thin 2D-materials and nanotubes as components to build fluidic conduits has pushed the limits of fabrication to the Å-scale. In this talk, I will discuss about angstrom (Å)-scale capillaries which are rectangular slit-shaped channels and are created by extracting one-atomic layer out of a crystal. The Å-capillary is an antipode of graphene and can be dubbed as “2D-nothing”. What is intriguing here is, the dimensions of the thinnest channels being comparable to the size of a water molecule.

The Å-capillaries have helped probe several intriguing molecular-scale phenomena experimentally, including: water flow under extreme atomic-scale confinement complete steric exclusion of ions, specular reflection and quantum effects in gas reflections off a surface, voltage gating of ion flows translocation of DNA. I will present ionic flows induced by stimuli (electric, pressure, concentration gradient) and discuss the importance of ionic parameters that are often overlooked in the selectivity between ions, along with ionic memory effects.

Biography

Prof. Radha Boya FRSC is a Professor, Royal Society University Research fellow and Kathleen Ollerenshaw fellow at the University of Manchester. After completing her PhD in India and a brief post-doctoral stint in the United States, she has secured a series of highly prestigious international research fellowships that have enabled her to rapidly build her research profile in the United Kingdom. She has published 60 research papers including several of these in Nature and Science journals. Radha was awarded an ERC starting grant, Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator award, Philip Leverhulme Prize in Physics, RSC Marlow award, UNESCO-L’Oréal International Rising Talent, L’Oréal UK & Ireland women in science fellow, and was recognized as an inventor of MIT Technology Review’s global “Innovators under 35” list.

Talk2：Material and Device Designs in Biomimetic Polymer Electronics

Speaker: Morteza Aramesh

Abstract

Nanoporous materials have emerged as promising platforms for directing immune cell behavior and have garnered considerable attention in the field of immunotherapy. These materials possess properties, including high surface area, tunable pore sizes, and controlled surface chemistry, enabling control over immune cell interactions and responses. Here we will give an overview of nanoporous materials as cell-instructive materials for immune cells and their applications in immunotherapy. Firstly, we discuss the design and fabrication of nanoporous materials, such as nanoporous ceramics and 3D printed polymer-based scaffolds, highlighting their ability to provide spatial confinement and mechanical cues to immune cells. The intricate interplay between nanopore size, surface properties, and topography is explored, emphasizing their influence on T cell activation and signaling. We highlight how nanoporous materials can be utilized to enhance the fitness and killing capacity of T cells, ultimately leading to improved immunotherapeutic outcomes. Lastly, we address the challenges and future

prospects of utilizing nanoporous materials as cell-instructive materials to effectively modulate the immune system for the treatment of various diseases, including cancer and infectious diseases.

Biography

Morteza Aramesh received his PhD in (bio)physics from the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he studied functionalization of nanomaterials for biomedical applications, such as single-DNA sensors. He was a Marie-Curie postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), where he was working on biosensors development for single-cell profiling. He held a Group Leader and Lecturer position at ETH Zurich, where he and his team studied mechanobiological cues to engineer cellular functions in immune cells for immunotherapy applications. He is currently holding a tenure-track Assistant Professorship at the Biomedical Engineering division of the Uppsala University, working on 3D biomaterials development for engineering cellular response in immune cells.

Talk3：Enhanced Optical Spectroscopy for single molecule detection with Plasmonic Nanopores: Challenges and Prospects

Speaker: Denis Garoli

Abstract

Plasmonics is the discipline that investigates the use of collective oscillations of conductive electrons in metallic nanostructures, called surface plasmons (SPs), to realize a large set of devices to be applied in sensing, nanomedicine, metamaterials, energy harvesting, and many others. During the past decade, several examples of plasmonic platforms have been proposed for single-molecule studies. Among others, plasmonic nanopores, i.e., sub-100 nm apertures connecting two compartments, are finding more and more interest as a specific family of solid-state nanopores with multiple functionalities. Plasmonic nanopores are a particular family of nanocavities able to engineer and confine electromagnetic fields to subwavelength volumes. In the past decade, they have enabled sensing, optical trapping, and the investigation of physical and chemical phenomena at a few or single-molecule levels. This extreme sensitivity is possible thanks to the highly confined local field intensity enhancement, which depends on the geometry of plasmonic nanocavities. Indeed, suitably designed structures providing engineered local optical fields lead to enhanced optical sensing based on different phenomena such as surface enhanced Raman scattering, fluorescence, and Forster resonance energy transfer. Here, I illustrate our most recent results on plasmonic nanopores, with specific emphasis on the detection of single molecules.

Biography

Denis Garoli is Senior Researcher and Team Leader at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genova (Italy). He received his Ph.D. degree in Space Science from the University of Padova in 2008, and his two Bachelor’s degrees (Physics and Biotechnology) from the same University in 2003 and 2011. Since 2014, he is Researcher at IIT where he is now coordinating three European Horizon grants focused on single molecule detection plasmonic platforms and DNA nanotechnology. He has published over 90 papers in numerous high-impact journals, including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Comm., ACS Nano, Advanced Energy Mat., Nano Letters, etc. His research group currently focuses on the development of nanopore technologies for single molecule sequencing and DNA data storage. Moreover, he is coordinating several international collaborations in nanotechnology and plasmonics applied to DNA nanotechnology. As of April 2023, his research has been cited more than 2600 times and he has an H-index of 29.

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Date: 12 May 2023

Talk: The Water-Graphene Interface: a Quaint Quantum Couple

Speaker: Mischa Bonn

Abstract

The importance of water across many disciplines of science and engineering cannot be overstated. Water shapes our blue planet, is a unique solvent in chemistry, the ‘elixir of life’ in biology, a key corrosion agent in engineering, and a complex fluid with a multitude of anomalies in its phase behavior in physics. Despite its importance, a full understanding of water in its various forms and systems remains challenging. This is particularly true for interfacial water. Water interfaces differ from the bulk, in both their physical structure and chemical composition. A particularly fascinating interface is the water-graphene interface. Water has been reported to flow through carbon nanotubes (essentially curved graphene) with remarkably low resistance. Large-area graphene can serve as an electrochemical electrode, allowing detailed studies of electrochemical processes.

Surface-specific spectroscopy on water in contact with graphene enable elucidating electrochemistry at the molecular level, and investigating the origin of the anomalous friction between water as it flows along graphene.

Biography

Prof. Dr. Mischa Bonn joined the Max Planck Society in 2011 as one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, heading the division “Molecular Spectroscopy”. Mischa completed his MSc degree in physical chemistry – with highest honors – in 1993 at the University of Amsterdam (NL) and performed his PhD research (1993-1996) at the FOM-Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam. After two postdoctoral stays, at the Fritz Haber Institute (1997-1999) and at Columbia University, New York (1998-1999), he became assistant professor in 1999 at Leiden University, to receive tenure and promotion to associate professor in 2002. In 2004, he returned to the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam as group leader. He has been an extraordinary professor at the University of Amsterdam since 2005 and an honorary professor at Mainz University since 2012. Mischa serves as Deputy Editor for The Journal of Chemical Physics, and as a member of the editorial advisory board of J. Am. Chem. Soc., amongst others. Mischa has won several prizes and awards for his work, including the Gold Medal from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society and the Van ’t Hoff Award from the Deutsche Bunsengesellschaft. His scientific interests focus on the development and application of laser-based (ultrafast) spectroscopies to advance our understanding of natural phenomena, specifically at interfaces – often involving Mischa’s favorite molecule: water.

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Date: 23 May 2023

Time: 6:00 pm (IST)

Talk: Renewable Energy Driven Decentralized Clean Water Production from Unconventional Sources

Speaker: Prof. Peng Wang

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Date: 31 May 2023

Time: 6:00 pm IST

Talk: Moving around in the nanoworld to do ‘work’

Speaker: Prof. JitKang Lim

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Date: 5 May 2023

Talk1：Smart Textiles for Personalized Health Care

Speaker: Jun Chen

Abstract

There is nothing more personal than healthcare. Health care should move from its current reactive and disease-centric system to a personalized, predictive, preventative, and participatory model with a focus on disease prevention and health promotion. As the world marches into the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G wireless, technology renovation enables the industry to offer a more individually tailored approach to healthcare with better health outcomes, higher quality, and lower cost. However, empowering the utility of IoT-enabled technologies for personalized health care is still significantly challenged by the shortage of cost-effective on-body biomedical devices to continuously provide real-time, patient-generated health data. Textiles have been concomitant and played a vital role in the long history of human civilization. Incorporating sensing and therapeutic capabilities into everyday textiles could be a powerful approach to the development of personalized healthcare. Merging biomedical devices and textiles becomes increasingly important owing to the growing trend of IoT since it could serve as on-body healthcare platforms with incomparable wearing comfort. In this talk, I will introduce our current research on smart textiles for biomonitoring, therapeutics, power supply, and textiles body area network for personalized health care.

Biography

Dr. Jun Chen is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on nanotechnology and bioelectronics for energy, sensing, and therapeutic applications in the form of smart textiles, wearables, and body area networks. He has published two books and 260 journal articles, with 160 of them being corresponding authors in Chemical Reviews (2), Chemical Society Reviews (2), Nature Materials, Nature Electronics (4), Nature Communications (4), Science Advances, Joule (3), Matter (10), Advanced Materials (12), and many others.  His works were selected as Research Highlights by Nature and Science seven times and covered by world mainstream media over 1,200 times in total, including NPR, ABC, NBC, Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal‎, and Scientific American. He also filed 14 US patents, including one licensed. With a current h-index of 97 and 55 ESI Highly Cited Papers, Dr. Chen was identified to be one of the world’s most influential researchers in the field of Materials Science by the Web of Science Group. Beyond research, he is an associate editor of Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Med-X, and Textiles. He also serves Advisory/ Editorial Board Members of Matter, Nano-Micro Letters, Materials Today Energy, Cell Reports Physical Science, and The Innovation. Among his many accolades are the V. M. Watanabe Excellence in Research Award, Nano Research Young Innovator Award, BBRF Young Investigator Award, ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award, MINE Young Investigator Award, Materials Today Rising Star Award, Advanced Materials Rising Star, ACS Nano Rising Stars Lectureship Award, Chem. Soc. Rev. Emerging Investigator Award,  Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials, UCLA Society of Hellman Fellows Award, Okawa Foundation Research Award, JMCA Emerging Investigator Award, Nanoscale Emerging Investigator Award, Frontiers in Chemistry Rising Stars, Highly Cited Researchers 2019/2020/2021/2022 in Web of Science, etc.

Talk2：Intelligent Fiber Electronics and Optoelectronics

Speaker: Wei Yan

Abstract

Fibers hold great societal relevance and impact on our everyday lives. They are essential building blocks of a broad spectrum of entities from the clothes on our body to aircraft constructs in space. While ubiquitous, fibers are typically made of single materials with simple functions. The capabilities of fibers have for the most part remained unchanged for millennia. In this talk, I will present unprecedented fibers integrating innovative metals, semiconductors, dielectrics and microchips, transforming these ancient yet largely underdeveloped forms into intelligent human-interfaced devices and smart systems for healthcare, biomedicine and security. Fiber electronics and optoelectronics are emerging, delivering value-added services for our society.

Biography

Dr. Wei Yan is a full professor at the State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, China. Prior to returning to China, he served as a Nanyang Assistant Professor jointly appointed at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, and a Scientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from EPFL (2017).

His research interests focus on next-generation human-interfaced flexible and soft fiber electronics for healthcare, medicine, energy, neuroscience, robotics and textiles. He has published many articles in high-profile international journals, such as Nature (1), Nature Nanotechnology (2), Advanced Materials (4), and Nature Communications (2). He is a co-inventor for 4 US patents. His research work has been highlighted by many prestigious media and journals, such as Nature, Science, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature News, Nature Podcast, National Science Review, MIT, EPFL, US Army, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Science and Technology Daily, China, China Science Daily, The Wall Street Journals, etc.

He has received many prestigious awards and honors, such as 35 Innovators under 35 of China, International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) Young Scientist Medal, finalist for the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2022 in Engineering and Technology (in total 30 finalists worldwide), the 1st Place, NASA Tech Briefs Design Competition (Aerospace/Defense Category) 2022, Professor René Wasserman Award in 2019 (the only winner) and IEEE Best Young Scientist Award in 2021.

He serves as a funding reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Dutch Research Council, a member for the Editorial Advisory Board of “Nanotechnology” (IOP Science), an Editorial Board member of “Advanced Fiber Materials” (Springer Nature) and an Editorial Board member of “Med-X” (Springer Nature) and InfoMat (Wiley).

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Date: 5 May 2023

Time: 14:30 South African time (8:30 EDT)

Presented by: Federico Rosei
Full professer at Centre Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunications,
Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique,
Varennes (QC) Canada

This presentation focuses on structure/property relationships in advanced materials, emphasizing multifunctional systems that exhibit multiple functionalities. Such systems are then used as building blocks for the fabrication of various emerging technologies. In particular, nanostructured materials synthesized via the bottom–up approach present an opportunity for future generations of low-cost manufacturing of devices. We focus in particular on recent developments in solar technologies that aim to address the energy challenge, including third-generation photovoltaics, solar hydrogen production, luminescent solar concentrators, and other optoelectronic devices.

Join: https://bit.ly/3mKqeLe 

Meeting ID: 396 446 903 500 

Passcode: AyzdSm

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Date: 2 May 2023

Talk1：In-sensor computing for artificial vision

Speaker: Yang Chai

Abstract

According to the projection by Semiconductor Research Corporation and Semiconductor Industry Association, the number of sensor nodes exponentially increases with the development of the Internet of Things. By 2032, the number of sensors is expected to be ~45 trillion, which will generate >1 million zettabytes (1027 bytes) of data per year. The massive data from sensor nodes obscure valuable information that we need it most. Abundant data movement between sensor and processing unit greatly increases power consumption and time latency, which poses grand challenges for the power-constraint and widely distributed sensor nodes in the Internet of Things. Therefore, it urgently requires a computation paradigm that can efficiently process information near or inside sensors, eliminate redundant data, reduce frequent data transfer, and enhance data security and privacy. We propose bioinspired in-sensor computing paradigm to reduce data transfer and decrease the high computing complexity by processing data locally. In this talk, we will discuss the hardware implementation of the in-sensor computing paradigms at the device and array levels. We will illustrate the physical mechanisms that lead to unique sensory response characteristics and their corresponding computing functions. In particular, bioinspired device characteristics enable the fusion of the sensor and computation functionalities, providing a way for intelligent information processing with low power consumption.

Biography

Prof. Yang Chai is the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Science of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Vice President of the Physical Society of Hong Kong, a member of The Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences, an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer since 2016, the Vice Chair of IEEE EDS region 10, and was the Chair of IEEE ED/SSC Hong Kong Chapter (2017-2019). He is a recipient of the RGC Early Career Award in 2014, the Semiconductor Science and Technology Early Career Research Award in 2017, the PolyU FAST Faculty Award in Research and Scholar Activities in 2018/2019, the Young Scientist Award of ICON-2DMAT in 2019, the PolyU President’s Award in Research and Scholar Activities in 2019/2020, NR45 Young Innovators Award in 2021, Young Scientist of World Laureate Forum in 2021,  and a finalist for the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2022 in Engineering and Technology. His current research interest mainly focuses on emerging electronic devices.

Talk2：Mechanically Modulated Semiconductor Interfaces: Energy, Sensing, and Beyond

Speaker: Jun Liu

Abstract

Electronic excitation of hot carriers has been recently proved at sliding or impacting metal/semiconductor and P-N junction interface, which has significant implications for next-generation energy harvesting technologies, electro-mechanical sensing, and mechano-chemistry applications. It has also been referred as ‘tribovoltaic effect’ in semiconductor materials. Compared to the pulsed alternating current (AC) power generated by traditional piezoelectricity or triboelectricity, the sustained direct-current (DC) power generated at dynamic semiconductor interfaces breaks down the power output limit by producing 2-3 orders’ higher current density. In this talk, I will first introduce the nanoscale discovery of the phenomenon on 2D materials with scanning probe microscopy, followed by the macroscale demonstration of the concept on a variety of semiconductors (Si, oxide, GaN, etc.) with scaled up power output. I will also discuss our recent theoretical effort in understanding the multiphysics phenomenon, as well as the ongoing technical development for self-powered wearable and implantable devices. Finally, I will introduce the coupling of the solid-state effect with liquid environment, which is capable of generating energetic free radicals for green chemistry applications.

Biography

Dr. Jun Liu is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The State University of New York at Buffalo. He is also an affiliated faculty of UB RENEW (Research and Education in eNergy, Environment and Water) Institute. Dr. Liu is also an Associate Editor of Energy Technology (Wiley) since 2023. He received his PhD (2018) in Materials Engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada with expertise on advanced materials and nanomechanics for energy harvesting.. He is the recipient of many awards such as 2022 SONY Faculty Innovation Award, 2020 Microsystem and Nanoengineering (MINE) Young Scientist Award (Springer Nature), and 2019 Best Scientific Research Award (Nanosymposium on Scanning Probe Microscopy). He has 40+ refereed publications in high-profile journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Science Advances, Matter, Nano Letters, and Advanced Functional Materials and multiple US and PCT patents. He has been invited for talk in many professional conferences such as MRS, SPIE, and NENS.

Talk3：Flexible and Stretchable Electronics based on Carbon Nanotubes

Speaker: Min Zhang

Abstract

Flexible and stretchable electronics has drawn intense interests because of their potential for emerging applications, providing imperceptible wearable devices and skin prosthesis repair for humans, soft perceptions for intelligent robots, and conformable interfaces for human-machine interactions, especially in the era of Internet of Things and the fifth-generation wireless technologies. At the same time, flexible electronics encounters challenging obstacles of material self-limiting fabrication, trade-off mechanical flexibility, and associated moderate electrical performance. Nanocarbon based electronics is of great promise to solve these problems for their intrinsic flexibility or stretchability, high carrier mobility, potential for large-area integration and capability to synthesize as semiconducting or metallic. This talk mainly covers carbon nanotube based flexible and stretchable transistors and circuits for logic processing and control, neuromorphic electronics for intelligence, sensors for acquiring information. Our efforts on monolithic system integration would provide more possibilities and open versatile doors for human life experience. This talk will provide our solutions to the challenges in this field, including devices, circuits, integration methods, materials and mechanisms.

Biography

Min Zhang is an Associate Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Deputy Director of Thin Film Transistor and Advanced Display Lab, and founder of Nanoelectronics and Soft Electronics Lab, China. She is a senior member of IEEE. She received her B.S. and M.Phil. degrees from the Department of Microelectronics and Solid-State Electronics at Xi’an Jiaotong University and her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She worked for Solomon Systech (Hong Kong) Limited in Hong Kong for six years, developing advanced devices for display technology with renowned foundries. She joined Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School in 2012. Her research interests are focused on flexible and stretchable electronics, nanoelectronics, neuromorphic electronics, bioelectronics as well as advanced displays. She has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and 1 book, and has been awarded 18 patents. She has served as technical program committee, organizing committee, session chair, and invited speaker at many renown international conferences.

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DATE: 28 April 2023

Talk: Biomolecular Needling Systems for Medicals

Speaker: Beomjoon Kim, Ph.D. Professor

Abstract

Recently, in the transdermal drug delivery methods, the microneedle-mediated drug delivery system (DDS) has been developed to replace the hypodermic injection-mediated DDS, to provide painless self-administration of biological drug with patient friendly manner. Dissoluble microneedles are attracting many attentions as it has several advantages such as no needle-related risks. We have developed new fabrication methods for biodegradable microneedles array patches (MAPs), which are different with the conventional fabrication ones, such as stepwise casting method. Here, new transdermal drug delivery system by using dissoluble micro needle patch will be introduced. We also develop several aspects of bio-sensors components to accomplish portable Point-of-Care diagnostic devices, which are disposal, user-friendly, low-cost, and highly sensitive. We fabricated porous microneedle on a paper substrate to develop a novel platform for direct integration of sensors. The device painlessly monitors fluid in the skin within seconds. Anyone can use the disposable patch without training, making it highly practical. Additionally, fabrication is easy, low cost, and the glucose sensor can be swapped for other paper-based sensors that monitor other important biomarkers.

Biography

Beomjoon Kim is a Professor of Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan. Also, he is currently a director of LIMMS-KIKO, a director of CREMeB (Center for Research on Engineering in Medicine and Biology), and in charge as a chair of corporate sponsored research division of “Virological Medicine”, at I.I.S., the University of Tokyo. He received his B.E. degree from Seoul National University, Dept. of Mechanical Design and Production Eng., Korea, in 1993, and M.S., Ph.D. in Precision Engineering, from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. He was a CNRS Associate Researcher in LPMO, Besancon, France (1998-99), and worked in MESA+ Research Institute, University of Twente (1999-2000). He was an Associate Professor in the Univ. of Tokyo (2000-2013), and was a co-director at the CIRMM/CNRS Paris office (2001-2003). He investigates several aspects of bio-sensors components to accomplish portable Point-of-Care diagnostic devices, which are disposal, user-friendly, low-cost, and highly sensitive. Moreover, he is interested to develop self-powered, energy harvesting micro sensors as well as smart monitoring system. Recently, main research topic is focused to study on new transdermal drug delivery system by using dissoluble micro needle patch. He has published 113 peer reviewed journal papers, 216 international conference papers, 204 domestic conference papers as well as tens of patents, books publications so far.

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DATE: 25 April 2023

Talk1：Smart Materials for Wearable Biosensors and Biomechanical Energy

Speaker: Wu Changsheng

ABSTRACT

The rapid pace of population ageing and the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the deficiency of medical resources and inefficiency of health systems, thus calling for imminent advancement on biomedical technologies. Current centralized healthcare is mainly offline and curative: the monitoring of patients’ physiological data is intermittent at doctor-centric facilities and care is given upon symptomatic conditions. Meanwhile, the swift advancement in smart materials, wearables, wireless communication, artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of things, offers a potential paradigm shift in healthcare by launching continuous, pervasive, and personalized digital health solutions, with challenges remaining in advanced monitoring modalities and energy sustainability. In this talk, I will review how advanced manufacturing enabled smart materials capable of continuously and sustainably sensing body signals can fundamentally change current health practices. I will introduce our recent progresses on: 1) wearable bioelectronics for multimodal sensing of human signals, including examples of wireless skin-interfaced optical and mechano-acoustic sensors for the monitoring of hemodynamics and tissue mechanics; 2) self-powered biomechanical systems based on triboelectric nanogenerator. These technologies, together with AI-assisted biosignal analysis, provide opportunities of energy-efficient, flexible, multifunctional bioelectronic systems, and will shape the future of digital health.

BIOGRAPHY

Changsheng Wu is an Assistant Professor (Presidential Young Prefessor) in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also an PI in the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology and the N.1 Institute for Health, NUS. He received his PhD in MSE from Georgia Tech and carried out postdoctoral research in the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics at Northwestern University. His research focuses on developing wireless wearables and intelligent robots for energy harvesting, biosensing and therapeutic applications, leveraging bioelectronics, materials science, and advanced manufacturing to create continuous, pervasive, and sustainable digital health solutions. He is the author of more than 60 publications and inventor of 7 patents. His work received the TechConnect 2018 Innovation Award and the 56th R&D 100 Awards.

Talk2：Biomolecular perception on soft interfaces

Speaker: Ting Wang

ABSTRACT

Precise perception of biosignals on the soft interfaces enables dynamically monitoring of health status at the molecular level.  Implementation of biosensors and its integrated systems on soft interfaces is quite challenging as biomolecular sensing involves complex cascade transduction process.  Aiming at the scientific problem of efficient signal transduction on soft interfaces, we focus on controlling the cascade signal transduction of biomolecules.  More specifically, in this talk, I will introduce: i) a chemomechanical transduction mechanism which realizes the tactile sensing of biomolecules; ii) the stability mechanism of cascade reactions which solves the problems of instability in both time and space domains; iii) a sensing-feedback cascade functional system which builds an interactive interface with compatible signal modality.

BIOGRAPHY

Ting Wang is a professor of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (NJUPT), China. She received her Ph.D. degree from Central South University in 2015. From 2015 to 2021, She was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). She joined NJUPT as a professor in June 2021. Her research interests focus on developing biosensors on soft interfaces for non/minimal-invasive health monitoring and artificial system. She has published 17 papers as the first/corresponding author including Nature Electronics and Advanced Materials with H index of 33. She also been sponsored by five funding such as the Natural Science Foundation for Young Scholars, the Program of Jiangsu Specially-Appointed Professor, etc. She is selected as Nanoscale Emerging Investigators (2022) and invited as a guest editor of Biosensors to organize a special issue of Flexible biosensors.

Talk3：Soft Materials as Neural Interfaces: Brain, Gut, Nerve, and Beyond

Speaker: Jinxing Li

ABSTRACT

The nervous system is a soft and dynamic system with complex electrical and molecular signaling, tissue development, and organ motion across broad time scales and physical dimensions. These facts challenge conventional bio-interface design regarding mechanical compatibility and functional versatility. Using unconventional soft materials to engineer electronics will lead to tissue-mimicking, mechanically compliant neural interfaces that can interrogate the central and peripheral nervous systems with high precision in a minimally invasive way. This presentation will focus on a few recent creations on how soft materials based on polymers and composites lead to more compliant soft neural interfaces: a composite-based elastic neurotransmitter sensor that can achieve multiplex neurotransmitter sensing in the brain and gut, and a viscoplastic-polymer-based morphable neurostimulator that can accommodate the growing nerve for chronic neurostimulation in rapidly growing nerves. Overall, we believe that new neuroengineering tools based on soft materials engineering will enable yet unimagined neuroscience discoveries and applications.

BIOGRAPHY

Jinxing Li is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering at Michigan State University. He joined MSU as part of the university’s Global Impact Initiative from Stanford University, where he did his postdoctoral research on soft bioelectronics. He received his Ph.D. in NanoEngineering at UC San Diego, with a research focus on medical micro/nanorobotics. He was a visiting scholar working on telemedicine devices in the Artificial Intelligence Research Lab at Bell Labs. He received his B.S. from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and M.S. from Fudan University in China, both in Electrical Engineering. He is a recipient of Siebel Scholar of Bioengineering, Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award, Dan David Prize Scholarship, American Chemical Society Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award, and MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35.

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DATE: 18 April 2023

Talk: Metasurface – enhanced holography, imaging, and biosensing

Speaker: Inki Kim

ABSTRACT

Metamaterials or metasurfaces – materials that are engineered to have properties that are not found in natural materials – allow us to overcome physical limitations. Metasurface science is further not only expanding field of optics and photonics by providing ultra-compact and multifunctional flat optical devices, also resolves challenging problems in diverse sectors like healthcare, optical display, imaging, and military affairs. In this talk, I will introduce metasurface-enhanced holography, imaging, and biosensing technologies. First, I will show multifunctional metaholograms for interactive displays, optical security labels, and visual gas sensors. By integrating high-efficiency dielectric metaholograms with liquid crystal cell, we are able to actively control holographic images, which are reacting with external targeted stimuli. Furthermore, advanced metasurface design algorithm enables multiple information encoding in a single device like coloration and polarization states. Secondly, I will explain an electrically tunable varifocal metalens that operates at visible wavelengths and a point cloud generating metasurface for advanced 3D depth imaging or LiDAR applications. The electrically tunable varifocal metalens will enable solid-state zoom tuning camera. The point cloud generating metasurface is able to spread 10K dots over 2π full space with over 80% diffraction efficiency, which is promising for scanning-free LiDAR technology. Finally, I will show metasurface-driven molecular sensing technologies including multiplexed plasmon resonance energy transfer (PRET) hyperspectral imaging and ultrafast photonic PCR. Such multiplexed nanospectroscopy method can open up a new path for real-time molecular sensing and imaging methods. The perfect absorber-based metaphotonic PCR accelerates chip-based point-of-care testing applications.

BIOGRAPHY

Inki Kim is an Assistant Professor in Department of Biophysics, Institute of Quantum Biophysics at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). He received his Ph.D degree (with Chang Kun Soo Memorial Award) in Mechanical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), and B.S. degree (with highest honor) in Mechanical Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). Prior to joining SKKU, he was a Sejong Science Fellow in Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH. He has published 50+ peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, Materials Today, and Light: Science and Applications. Currently his research interests are experimental nanoscale photonics including metamaterials, metasurfaces, plasmonics, nanofabrications, bionanophotonics, quantum biophysics, and quantum-integrated medical devices.

Talk: Emerging nonlinear nanophotonic platform – thin film lithium niobate

Speaker: Mengjie Yu

ABSTRACT

Lithium niobate (LN) is an excellent nonlinear photonic material due to its large electro-optic (EO) coefficient, second order  and Kerr () nonlinearity, along with a wide optical transparency window. Thanks to the recent advances in nanofabrication technology, monolithic LN waveguides with high optical confinement and ultralow linear loss has been achieved, which was critical to the success of the silicon-based platform in the past decade. Highly efficient and controllable light-matter interactions can be achieved using optical, electrical, or mechanical waves at extremely compact footprints. In this talk, I will review our recent developments of thin-film LN nonlinear devices for  and -based parametric frequency conversion, high power EO frequency combs, femtosecond pulse synthesis and optical isolator. Combination of multiple nonlinearities of LN unlocks ultrabroadband electromagnetic spectrum from microwave to mid-infrared. Lastly, I will discuss the potential of LN photonic platform for scaling up and accelerating classical and quantum technologies in sensing, photonic computing, and communication networks.

BIOGRAPHY

Mengjie Yu is Gabilan Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2018 from Cornell University and held research staff associate position in Applied Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University from 2015-2018. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University from 2018-2021. She has published over 40 papers in numerous high-impact journals, including Nature, Science, Nature Photonics, Light Science & Application, Nature Communications, Optica, ACS Photonics, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, etc.

Her research group focuses on developing nanoscale nonlinear and quantum photonics devices for optical communication, computing, sensing, and metrology. Her research interests include nonlinear physics, optical frequency comb, spectroscopy, photonic computing, and quantum optics, enabled by advanced nanofabrication of low-loss photonic structures based on silicon, silicon nitride, and lithium niobate. She serves on the Early Career Editorial Advisory Board for APL Photonics. She is the 2020 the Optica (formerly OSA) Ambassador, the Caltech 2019 Young Investigator Lecturer, and the Rising Star Women in Engineering in the Asian Deans Forum 2019. She served as chair of the OSA Integrated Photonics Technical Group from 2019 – 2021.

Talk3: 3D metafibre optics

Speaker: Haoran Ren

ABSTRACT

The development of ultracompact, flexible, and versatile fibre-based technology for advanced imaging has the potential for a profound impact on many photonic, biological, and medical applications. Meta-optics, which allows complete wavefront control of light by ultrathin subwavelength structures, has offered a transformative platform for both fundamental study of light–matter interactions at a nanoscale and a diverse range of photonic applications. In this talk, I will introduce our recent work in 3D metafibre optics with unleashed height degree of freedom for all-on-fibre wavefront manipulation [1-3]. We fabricated a 3D achromatic diffractive metalens on the end face of a single-mode fiber, achieving achromatic and polarization-insensitive focusing across the entire near-infrared telecommunication wavelength band ranging from 1.25 to 1.65 μm [2]. The unlocked height degree of freedom in 3D nanopillar meta-atoms largely increases the upper bound of the time-bandwidth product of an achromatic metalens, leading to a wide group delay modulation range and thereby a broad wavelength coverage. Furthermore, we demonstrate the use of our compact and flexible achromatic metafiber for fiber-optic confocal imaging, capable of creating in-focus sharp images under broadband light illumination. I will finish my talk by presenting our recent development of vectorial metafibers for the generation of arbitrary structured vector beams on a hyrbid-order Poincaré sphere, including those carrying different orbital angular momentum modes.

1. M. Plidschun et al., Ultrahigh numerical aperture meta-fibre for flexible optical trapping. Light Sci. Appl. 10, 57 (2021).
2. H. Ren et al., An achromatic metafiber for focusing and imaging across the entire telecommunication range. Nat. Commun. 13, 4183 (2022).
3. C. Li et al., Metafiber transforming arbitrarily structured light, arXiv:2302.13010 (2023).

BIOGRAPHY

Dr Haoran Ren is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University. He joined Monash from June 2022, before that he held a Macquarie University Research Fellowship at Macquarie University, a Humboldt Research Fellowship at LMU Munich, and postdoc at RMIT University. He got a PhD from Swinburne University of Technology in 2017. His nanophotonic research seeks to uncover the underlying physics in multi-dimensional light manipulation and structured light-matter interactions. He has broad research interests including structured light imaging, meta-optics, resonant photonics, quantum photonics, near-field and on-chip photonics, and fibre optics. His group aims to develop advanced optical materials and nanotechnology to unleash the full potential of light for optical and quantum information processing. Dr Ren holds a Honorary Research Fellow position at the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Macquarie University. He is an Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) and a member of APL Photonics Early Career Editorial Advisory Board. He was awarded the 2022 ANZOS Geoff Opat Early Career Researcher Prize, the 2017 Victoria Fellowship, and the 2016 Outstanding Self-financed Chinese Students Abroad (the Special Prize). His research has been featured by 2022 Emerging Leaders in Journal of Optics and 2022 MQ Research Spotlight. He has published over 30 papers in high-impact journals, including Science, Science Advances, Nature Photonics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Chemical Reviews, etc.

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DATE: 14 April 2023

SPEAKER: Xue Feng

TALK: Flexible integrated circuits: design, manufacture and applications

ABSTRACT:

Flexible electronics technology refers to the integration of different materials and functional units on flexible substrates to form thin, flexible, deformable and reconfigurable electronic devices/systems. It subversively changes the rigid physical form of traditional electronic devices. The core of flexible electronics technology is the design, manufacture and reliability of flexible integrated devices. This talk firstly introduces the design theory and manufacture of flexible integrated devices, including the evolution mechanism of semiconductor properties under deformation and the integration method of transfer printing on heterogeneous interfaces. For wafer level manufacturing of flexible integrated devices, nanometer diamond enhanced wafer grinding method is used, which can thin 4-12 inch wafer to 25 microns. With ultra-thin chips transfer and high energy laser beam slicing, the single flexible chips with independent function are obtained. Then the flexible chips are picked up, transferred, interconnected, encapsulated and integrated, and finally the flexible integrated devices are formed. The first small test line of flexible integrated device manufacturing domestic and abroad and the CNAS standard testing and certification system have been established, and ultra-thin flexible chips, high-density packaging of flexible chips, high-precision SMT of flexible circuit boards and low-temperature silicone injection encapsulation have been realized from chip level to module level manufacturing. The above technologies greatly promote the innovation and development of flexible integrated devices and their applications in health care, intelligent perception, major equipment and other fields.

BIOGRAPHY:

Xue Feng, male, born in 1977, Professor of Tsinghua University, 973 Project Chief Scientist, currently director of Flexible Electronic Technology Laboratory of Tsinghua University, President of Zhejiang Tsinghua Flexible Electronic Technology Research Institute, etc.

Professor Feng Xue is committed to solid mechanics and flexible electronics technology. So far, he has published more than 260 SCI papers in Nat. Mater., Sci. Adv., Adv Mater. More than 190 national invention patents and 9 software Copyrights were authorized. He has won the Heliang Heli Foundation Science and Technology Innovation Award, China Youth Science and Technology Award, National Outstanding Scientist of Science and Technology, Qiushi Outstanding Youth Award of China Association for Science and Technology, etc. Ranked in 1st, he has won the first prize of Beijing Natural Science, the first prize of Technology Invention of the Ministry of Education and many other awards.

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Theme: Towards Building a New Expertise Across Africa

Date: 3 – 7 July 2023

This workshop will bring together cutting-edge researchers in computational geodynamics to Kigali (Rwanda) with the aim to expose young African talents to this field. This event is co-sponsored by the ICTP-East African Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-EAIFR) of the University of Rwanda and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG)

Find out more at: https://indico.ictp.it/event/10183

Theme: Applications and Advanced Topics

Date: 17 – 23 April 2023

TinyML is a subfield of Machine Learning focused on developing models that can be executed on small, real-time, low-power, and low-cost embedded devices. This allows for new scientific applications to be developed at an extremely low cost and at large scale.

TinyML represents a collaborative effort between the embedded power systems and Machine Learning communities, which traditionally have operated independently. TinyML has a significant role to play in achieving the SDGs and facilitating scientific research in areas such as environmental monitoring, physics of complex systems and energy management.

Find out more at: https://indico.ictp.it/event/10166

Date: 20 April 2023

Time: 09h00 – 12h00

Venue: MUHAZI Lecture Hall of UR-CST Nyarugenge campus

It is a time to strengthen links with researchers in Europe as well as build interdisciplinary bridges with researchers at UR and Rwanda in general. There will be a colloquium talk by the Director of ICTP Trieste Italy, Prof. Atish DABHOLKAR, who is also ADG at UNESCO. This will be preceded by presentations of different opportunities open and available to researchers through ICTP Trieste.
If you would like take your research up a notch or more, this will be a good program to attend.

BRIEF CONCEPT NOTE
ICTP-EAIFR is not about physics alone but has a focus on Fundamental Research. After all, it is the East African Institute for FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH. We welcome people from different areas of science and engineering for collaborative research with us where we can, together, apply fundamental principles to solve important problems. This involves not only research in physics but also research in its tool of mathematics and in the application of fundamental principles in areas such as climate change/modeling, chemistry, biology, and other fields.
In fact, at ICTP Trieste Italy, from which EAIFR derives its model, there is research in Quantitative Life Sciences (QLS) and in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) along with research in the traditional areas of Mathematics, Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics, Earth Systems Physics, and High Energy Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
On Thursday 20th of April, we will be building a bridge that connects different areas of science including its applications (engineering).
If you would like to have more links for research collaboration, this is the program for you. You can receive information on how to collaborate with ICTP Trieste (and EAIFR) to carry our cutting edge research related to your field.

Visit their websites: ictp.it  and eaifr.org

Date: 11 April 2023

Talk1：Development of Upconversion Nanomaterials for Precision Theranostics

Speaker: Xiaoxue Xu

ABSTRACT

Upconversion nanoparticle (UCNPs) have a photoluminescent ability to emit higher energy emissions at UV and visible range after absorption of two or more photons from lower energy wavelength. Lanthanide ions doped UCNPs is one of the most promising candidates. The Ln ions doped UCNPs present unique optical, electronic and magnetic properties which have attracted broad biomedical applications. This seminar will focus on the development of UCNPs for precision theranostics including the programmed fabrication of UCNPs, the optical and magnetic properties tailoring, surface functionalization for biolabelling, multimodal biomedical imaging and light triggered drug delivery.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr Xiaoxue Xu is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Dr Xu completed the PhD at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in 2012. After the first Research Assistant Professorship at UWA, she moved to Macquarie University to take the Macquarie University Research Fellowship in 2015. In 2017, Dr Xu was awarded the Chancellor Postdoctoral Research Fellowships from UTS. Dr Xu has been working in biomaterials for more than 10 years focusing on inorganic nanomaterials including luminescent upconversion nanoparticles, hybrid heterogeneous nanostructures and ultrafine grained bulk metals for bioimaging, biolabeling, drug delivery and bio-implants. The ongoing research projects include the surface modifications and hybridization of upconversion nanomaterials for multimodal bioimaging, and light triggered drug release in precision nanomedicine. The project on the bulk bioadaptive metallic biomaterials is newly developed for biomedical implants and devices. Dr Xu is the associate Editor of Bioactive Materials and the Editor Board for Materials Letters. She has published 80 papers in top-tiered journals including Progress in Materials Sciences, Matter, Nature Communication, Advanced Science, Nanoletters, Small etc.

Talk2：Nano-in-nano integration to enable multidisciplinary nanofluidics

Speaker: Yan Xu

ABSTRACT

Nanofluidics is the study and application of fluids in and around geometries with nanoscale characteristic dimensions. Nanofluidics is usually considered a realm that evolved from microfluidics, but is obviously not a mere extension of microfluidics. New physical phenomena and effects which are not observed in bulk or at microscales, start to emerge and dominate at nanoscales, opening up an unchartered research territory for exploring new scientific insights and applications of fluids. A significant growth of research in nanofluidics is achieved over the past decade, but the field is still facing considerable challenges toward the transition from the current physics-centered stage to the next application-oriented stage. To conquer these challenges, we established a technology called “nano-in-nano integration”, which allows the integration of a variety of functional (eg., fluidic, electrical, optical, thermal, magnetic, chemical and biological) components in tiny nanofluidic channels. The nano-in-nano integration technology opens up new avenues to exploit chemistry, biology, and materials science at femtoliter, attoliter, single-nanoparticle, and single-molecule scales through nanofluidics, as demonstrated by us in our recent works which will be presented in this talk.

BIOGRAPHY

Yan Xu is an Associate Professor and the principal investigator of the Nanofluidics Lab at Osaka Metropolitan University, Japan. He received his bachelor’s degree (2001) from Dalian University of Technology and his master’s degree (2004) from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He completed his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Tokyo. Research in his group is directed toward the use of nanofluidic devices for chemistry, biology, materials science, and process engineering. His research group continues to involve the study and development of novel nanofluidic methods for single molecule chemistry, single cell omics, biomaterials, and nanomedicine.

Talk3：Advanced nanofabrication and metamaterials at the nano-bio interfaces

Speaker: Haogang Cai

ABSTRACT

In an era of precision medicine and big data, the computational technology is very powerful to store and process data. However, there is an urgent need of tools to probe and control biosignals with a comparable high throughput, which often requires a high resolution and deep reach. To address these challenges, my lab aims to build new paradigms of nanotechnology for biological and biomedical applications, including mechanobiology, immunology, biophotonics and biosensing. In this talk, I will highlight the advanced nanofabrication and metamaterials we developed, including novel and aggressively miniaturized mechanical and optical probes, to manipulate and collect biosignals at various scales. (1) Single-molecule biomimetic cell interfaces based on top-down nanofabrication and bottom-up functionalization. We build molecular architectures to mimic extracellular microenvironments and cellular surfaces for mechanobiology study. In particular, we investigate the geometric effect of transmembrane receptor clustering in critical cellular functions from adhesion to immune response. (2) Optical metasurfaces and the transfer/integration technology. Metasurfaces are two-dimensional thin films of nanostructures that manipulate light-matter interactions in a way not found in naturally occurring materials. Metasurface transfer and integration technology will enable ultracompact optical systems for biophotonic applications from microendoscopy to biosensing. (3) Mechanical metamaterials based on nano-kirigami technology, which is a new approach for three-dimensional nanofabrication and dynamic actuation. The integration with biomimetic surfaces and optical metasurfaces promises novel biomedical applications.

BIOGRAPHY

Haogang Cai is currently an Assistant Professor in the Health Technology and Engineering Institute (Tech4Health) at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He is also a faculty member of the Departments of Radiology, Biomedical Engineering, and Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health. Dr. Cai received his B.S. from Xi’an Jiaotong University and M.S. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, both in Electronic Science and Technology. In 2016, he received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University. From 2016 to 2020, he had postdoctoral trainings at Columbia University and Argonne National Laboratory. With a multidisciplinary academic and training background, Dr. Cai’s research group aims to build new paradigms of nanotechnology for biological and biomedical applications, including mechanobiology, immunology, biophotonics and biosensing. Dr. Cai has received federal grants and awards, including a recent MIRA R35 award from NIH/NIGMS. His work has been published in high-impact journals, including Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Protocols, Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Nano Letters, etc.

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 7 April 2023

Talk1：F Biomimetic peptide self-assembly for functional materials and novel applications

Speaker: Rusen Yang

ABSTRACT

Supramolecular assembly of metabolites produces novel materials with hierarchical structures, good biological properties, and unique physical properties. They are an essential biomimetic material, and self-assembly structures with excellent piezoelectric properties enable the study of the electromechanical coupling properties in biomaterials. However, the randomly oriented piezoelectric domains adversely affect the performance of piezoelectric biomaterials, and uniform polarization is needed for the material to show a macroscopic piezoelectric effect and to improve the performance of a piezoelectric device. We combine theoretical calculations and experimental studies to synthesize piezoelectric biomaterials based on amino acid and peptide self-assembly. We applied an electric field during the growth process to synthesize micron column arrays with controlled spontaneous polarization directions. We then studied the influence of the electric field on self-assembly. Our calculations showed that peptide-based piezoelectric materials outperform traditional piezoelectric ceramics in energy harvesting applications. We developed metabolite-based piezoelectric nanogenerators, composite nanogenerators, and flexible nanogenerators. We also revealed the degradation behavior of peptide-based nanogenerators in different solutions. The research of peptide self-assembly materials has strongly promoted the discovery of environmentally friendly biomimetic functional materials and the advancement of new energy, advanced sensing, and other technologies, improving and enhancing people’s health and quality of life.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Rusen Yang is a Hua Shan professor and vice dean of the School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Xidian University in China. He obtained his M.S. and B.S. in Condensed Matter Physics from Jilin University, China. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, where he continued as a Post-Doctoral Associate till 2010. From 2010 to 2018, he worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he was elected as a McKnight Land Grant Professor in 2013. He has focused his research on synthesizing new nanomaterials and exploring their application for energy harvesting and sensing applications. He has developed new processes to achieve nanowires with controlled orientation and post-growth approaches to align nanostructures. He has created piezoelectric biomaterials with controlled polarization and applied them for energy harvesting. He has published over 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals that have been cited over 12,000 times, and his transformative work won him NSF Career Award, 3M NTFA Award, and Nano Energy Award. His currently a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a Deputy Editor of Research.

Talk2：Neuromorphic Silicon Photonics and Applications from Classical to Quantum

Speaker: Bhavin J. Shastri

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) powered by neural networks has enabled applications in many fields (medicine, finance, autonomous vehicles). Digital implementations of neural networks are limited in speed and energy efficiency. Neuromorphic photonics aims to build processors that use light and photonic device physics to mimic neurons and synapses in the brain for distributed and parallel processing while offering sub-nanosecond latencies and extending the domain of AI and neuromorphic computing applications.

We will discuss photonic neural networks enabled by CMOS-compatible silicon photonics. We will highlight applications that require low latency and high bandwidth, including wideband radio-frequency signal processing, fiber-optic communications, and nonlinear programming (solving optimization problems). We will briefly introduce a quantum photonic neural network that can learn to act as near-perfect components of quantum technologies and discuss the role of weak nonlinearities.

BIOGRAPHY

Prof. Bhavin J. Shastri is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Physics at Queen’s University and a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute. He was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. He received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering (photonics) from McGill University in 2012. Dr. Shastri is the recipient of the 2022 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award and the 2020 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics “for his pioneering contributions to neuromorphic photonics” from the ICO. He is a co-author of the book Neuromorphic Photonics, a term he helped coin. He has published more than 90 journal articles and 110 conference proceedings, 7 book chapters, and given over 90 invited talks, including 5 keynotes and 5 tutorials. Dr. Shastri is a Senior Member of Optica and IEEE.

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 04 April 2023

Talk1：Differentiable Imaging – Differentiable Programming Advances Computational Imaging

Speaker: Ni Chen

ABSTRACT

The field of computational imaging has made significant advancements in recent years, yet it still faces limitations due to the restrictions imposed by traditional computational techniques. Differentiable programming offers a solution by combining the strengths of classical optimization and deep learning, through the integration of physics into the modeling process, differentiable imaging, which employs differentiable programming in computational imaging, has the potential to overcome challenges posed by sparse, incomplete, and noisy data. As a result, it has the potential to play a key role in advancing the field of computational imaging and its various applications. This talk will provide perspectives on differentiable imaging with a particular application in holography, known as differentiable holography.

BIOGRAPHY

Ni Chen is an Associate Research Professor at the Wyant College of Optical Sciences in the University of Arizona. She received her B.S. degree in software engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2008 and her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in 2014. Her research endeavors primarily focus on computational 3D/4D imaging and display, with a specific emphasis on bridging the gap between computational techniques and physical systems to overcome the current limitations of computational imaging techniques. Chen’s work is highly regarded, and she has a robust publication record with over 40 articles published in prestigious journals such as Laser & Photonics Reviews and Photonics Research. Her research contributions have earned her several awards, including the best paper award in International Optical Design Conference of OPTICA 2021 and International Meeting on Information Display 2012. Her research has also been reported by EurekAlert, Communications of the ACM, and etc.

Talk2：Quantitative Phase Imaging: a bridge between optical physics and live-cell analysis

Speaker: Renjie Zhou

ABSTRACT

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is a promising label-free imaging technique that can reveal the structures and functions of living cells in their native states. Driven by the demand for affordable point-of-care testing tools, our lab has recently developed QPI-based solutions for blood testing and analyzing microbial risk of pathogens. Blood test is an important medical test as abnormal blood cell counts or morphologies contain abundant health information of a person. We developed a ResNet based neural network to extract rich information from QPI images and achieved reagent-free classification of human leukocytes, including granulocytes, monocytes, and B and T lymphocytes, with an average accuracy of 90.5%. As we recently made our QPI system more compact with a low cost, we also developed a low-latency neural network for real-time phase imaging and analysis of large cell populations. Furthermore, we are employing an all-optical neural network for cell classification to drastically increase the analysis speed closer to the speed of light. The assessment of bacterial viability is critical in evaluating water quality, while traditional heterotrophic plate counting based methods are time-consuming, and the evaluation of bacterial viability is limited to the judgment of “dead or alive”. To improve the efficiency and accuracy of bacterial viability analysis, we recently developed a label-free bacterial viability analyzer based on our high sensitivity QPI method that can achieve fast and accurate bacterial viability analysis due to acute or chronic injuries. To fully unleash the potential of QPI, more interdisciplinary research collaborations are expected in the future.

BIOGRAPHY

Renjie Zhou is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he directs the Laser Metrology and Biomedicine Laboratory. He received his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 and undertook postdoctoral training at MIT between 2014-2017. His research interest is in developing optical precision instruments for various research and industrial applications. He has published over 100 journal and conference papers and filed over 10 US and China patents with several licensed to industry, including his own startup that received the Rising Star Award at MIT Technology Review China in Life Science Start-up Competition. He has been involved in organizing > 20 international conferences as co-chairs/committee members, delivered >40 conference invited talks and seminars/colloquiums, and reviewed for >30 international journals. He is currently serving on the editorial boards of JOSA A, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, and International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing. He is a Senior Member of Optica and SPIE and a regular member of IEEE. He received Croucher Innovation Awards in 2019.

Talk3：High-speed 3D imaging and metrology: from classical fringe projection to deep learning approaches

Speaker: Chao Zuo

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of optoelectronic information technology, three-dimensional (3D) imaging and sensing has become a research forefront in optical metrology. Fringe projection profilometry (FPP) is one of the most representative 3D imaging technologies due to its non-contact, high-resolution, high-speed, and full-field measurement capability. In recent years, with the rapid advances of optoelectronic devices and digital signal processing units, people subsequently set higher expectations on FPP: it should be both “high precision” and “high speed”. While these two aspects seem contradictory in nature, “speed” has gradually become a fundamental factor that must be taken into account when using FPP, and high-precision 3D reconstruction using only one single pattern has been the ultimate goal of structured light 3D imaging in perpetual pursuit. Nowadays, deep learning technology has fully “permeated” into almost all tasks of optical metrology. In this talk, we introduce our recent efforts to apply deep-learning approaches to FPP. We show that the deep-learning-enabled fringe analysis approach can significantly boost the accuracy and improve the quality of the phase reconstruction compared to conventional single-fringe phase retrieval approaches. Deep learning can also be used to achieve single-frame, high-precision, unambiguous 3D shape reconstruction, which is expected to fill the speed “gap” between 3D imaging and 2D sensing and enables FPP techniques to go a step further in high-speed and high-accuracy 3D surface imaging of transient events.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Chao Zuo is a professor in optical engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST), China. He leads the Smart Computational Imaging Laboratory (SCILab: www.scilaboratory.com) at the School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, NJUST, and is also the founder and director of the Smart Computational Imaging Research Institute of NJUST. He has long been engaged in the development of novel Computational Optical Imaging and Measurement technologies, with a focus on Phase Measuring Imaging Metrology such as Holographic Interferometric Microscopy, Noninterferometic Quantitative Phase Imaging (QPI), Fringe Projection Profilometry (FPP), and Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM). He has authored > 200 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals (e.g., Light, Optica, Adv. Photon.) with over 11,000 citations. These researches have been featured on journal cover over 20 times and highlighted by Nature, Light. Sci. Appl., SPIE Newsroom, CLP Newsroom, and Optica Image of the Week. He is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher and a Fellow of SPIE and Optica. He also serves as Associate Editors of Optics and Lasers in Engineering and PhotoniX.

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 31 March 2023

Talk: Perovskite and silicon tandem solar cells for high efficiency electricity and hydrogen generation

Speaker: Kylie Catchpole

ABSTRACT

Combining perovskites with well-established photovoltaic materials such as silicon is an attractive approach for producing cheap, high efficiency and high voltage solar cells.  In our work we have used a range of approaches to increase the efficiency of perovskite solar cells for tandems, including 2D perovskites, nanostructured surfaces and novel materials, and have demonstrated over 30% efficiency for 4-terminal perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells.  The high efficiency achievable with perovskite/silicon tandems also enable high efficiency for direct solar-to-hydrogen generation, and we demonstrate a system that uses such tandems to achieve a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 20%.  We also discuss how high efficiency can contribute to lowering the cost of photovoltaics and to decarbonization, as well as some emerging research challenges as solar transitions to become one of the world’s major energy technologies.

BIOGRAPHY

Kylie Catchpole is Professor in the School of Engineering at the Australian National University.  She has research interests in solar cells and solar fuels as well as the broader energy transition.  Her group has achieved world leading efficiencies for perovskite and perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells, and their work on direct solar-to-hydrogen generation was listed as one of the top 10 innovations globally by the Innovation for a Cool Earth Forum (ICEF) in 2020.   She was awarded the inaugural John Booker Medal for Engineering Science from the Australian Academy of Science for her work on increasing light absorption in solar cells using nanophotonics.   In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 28 March 2023

Talk1：Overcoming brittleness through seashell-inspired architectures

Speaker: Zhen Yin

ABSTRACT

Glass and ceramics receive sustained demands in many engineering applications due to their hardness and chemical stability. However, the brittleness of glass and ceramics leads to poor reliability and low damage tolerance. In conventional engineering materials, mechanical properties such as stiffness and toughness are often mutually exclusive so that it is challenging to achieve combinations of these properties. Interestingly, mollusk shells are bio-ceramics made of brittle minerals but have toughness thousands of times higher than their weak constituents yet still achieve high stiffness and strength. The secret of these tough seashells lies in their highly organized hierarchical micro-architectures that utilize the synergies between hard mineral building blocks and ductile organic interfaces. In this lecture, I will first talk about some of the pioneers’ works that help us understand the structure and mechanics of seashells. Then, I will show state-of-the-art research efforts that try to duplicate the structures and mechanisms of seashells in synthetic materials.  In the end, I will present my projects on developing highly deformable, tough and transparent architectured materials through laser engraved meso-scale architectures.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Zhen Yin join the department of control science and engineering, Tongji University, and Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems as a professor in 2023. Previously, he was an Alexander Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, working with Prof. Metin Sitti. He received his PhD degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University in 2020, advised by Prof. Francois Barthelat. Dr. Yin’s research focuses on bioinspired architectures, robotic structures and structural mechanics. His work on architectured systems has been published in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature Reviews Materials, Acta Biomaterailia, Composite Structures, among others. Dr. Yin received Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad and other awards. During the pandemic, he founded and has since been serving as the president for The Martlets Society – a society which seeks to encourage and provides a platform for young scholars to facilitate interdisciplinary exchanges. In his spare time, he loves drawing, photographing and colorizing old photos.

Talk2：Shape-Morphing Structures Based on Architected Materials

Speaker: Mingchao Liu

ABSTRACT

The ability of an object to change its shape is as important to an emerging class of engineering applications as it is to biological organisms: just as animals and plants morph in response to external stimuli, soft robots must be able to change shape to adapt to different environments and to complete different tasks. Artificial structures with the ability to change their shapes are referred to as shape-morphing structures. Several shape-morphing mechanisms have been proposed in recent years. However, due to the restriction of geometric incompatibility, it remains challenging to achieve a particular three-dimensional (3D) target structure with the desired geometry from a two-dimensional (2D) flat sheet, especially lacking the inverse design framework. In addition, achieving a particular 3D shape usually requires multiple responsive materials and/or the application of external stimuli. In this talk, I will showcase several examples that demonstrate how architectured materials can be utilized to create shape-morphing structures with complex geometries (such as complex curvature distribution and non-axisymmetry), as well as multi-stability and re-programmability, through simple mechanisms.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Mingchao Liu is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Before moving to NUT, He was a Newton International Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, sponsored by the Royal Society from 2018 to 2021. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanics from Tsinghua University in 2018, and B.Eng. in Engineering Mechanics from Shandong University in 2013. His current research is mainly focused on the mechanics of slender structures and its applications in the design of shape-morphing structures and the modelling of soft robots.

Talk3：Architected Material Analogs of Shape Memory Alloys

Speaker: Yunlan Zhang

ABSTRACT

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are smart materials that find applications in areas as diverse as medical devices, endodontic files, and structural dampers for infrastructures. Nevertheless, the widespread use of these materials is limited by their high cost, which is driven by the need for high-purity raw materials and extensive thermo-mechanical processing. Architected materials are another class of emerging materials that usually consist of numerous unit cells. By tailoring the geometry and topology of the unit cells, these materials can exhibit novel and/or customized properties and responses to physical stimuli. Here, we create a type of architected material that can reproduce the novel properties of SMAs which are referred to as Architected Material Analogs of SMAs (ASMAs). ASMAs comprise periodic multistable unit cells and can exhibit both the salient behaviors, superelasticity and shape memory effect of SMAs. ASMAs can be made from a wide variety of polymers, made by many different low-cost production processes as well as 3D printing, and are designed to respond to various stimuli such as heat, magnetic fields, and solvent absorption. ASMAs offer a lower-cost alternative that can expand the design space for SMA-like material behavior to include larger-scale (e.g., seismic resistance device) or lower-cost applications (e.g., medical implants).

BIOGRAPHY

Yunlan Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Before she joined UT, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Engineering Science at University of Oxford. She received her PhD and MS degrees in civil engineering from Purdue University in 2019, and her BS in civil engineering from The Ohio State University in 2012. Her research interests include architected materials, deployable structures, and bioinspired design. She wants to combine her knowledge of structures and materials to create advanced structures with applications that range in scale from microscopic medical devices to macroscopic infrastructure retrofits and extraterrestrial habitats. She enjoys working with students just as much as conducting research.

website: www.ican-x.com

Dates: 5 – 8 November 2023

Venue: Diaz Hotel & Resort, 1 Beach E Blvd, Mossel Bay, South Africa

The conference organizing committee invites abstracts, addressing one of the conference themes, or any topic relevant to catalysis, for oral and poster presentations.
Abstracts will be accepted until the 15th July 2023.
Abstracts can be submitted online (https://catsa2023conference.co.za/abstracts/) or emailed to catsa2023.abstracts@gmail.com.
Delegates are encouraged to take advantage of our reduced early-bird registration fees (https://catsa2023conference.co.za/register-now/).

THEMES
• Heterogeneous catalysis
• Homogeneous catalysis
• Bio-catalysis
• Electrocatalysis
• Theoretical catalysis

TOPICS IN CATALYSIS:
• Catalyst synthesis
• Catalytic materials
• Novel catalyst designs
• Catalyst characterization
• Industrial catalysis
• Catalysis and renewable energy
• Fuel cell technology
• Photocatalysis
• Environmental catalysis
• Water treatment

IMPORTANT DATES
Abstracts:
Submission Deadline: 15th July 2023
Acceptance Notifications: 31st August 2023
Registration dates:
Early-bird: 1st April – 31st July 2023
Late: 1st August – 15th September 2023

For registration and more information, visit: www.catsa2023conference.co.za

Date: 24 March 2023

Speaker: Patrice Simon

Talk: Electrochemistry at the nanoscale: applications to materials for energy storage

ABSTRACT

Growing demand for fast charging electrochemical energy storage devices with long cycle lifetimes for portable electronics has led to a desire for alternatives to current battery systems, which store energy via slow, diffusion-limited faradaic reactions. Electrochemical Capacitors (ECs), also called supercapacitors could fit these demands as they can be fully charged within minutes with almost unlimited cyclability, but they suffer from limited energy density. In this talk, I will give an overview of the research work we achieved on capacitive (porous carbon) and high-rate redox (2-Dimmensionnal) materials, and show how the use/development of advanced electrochemical techniques can help in the development of materials with improved performance.

BIOGRAPHY

Patrice Simon is Distinguished Professor of Material Science at the Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier.

He has served as director of the Alistore European Research Institute (www.alistore.eu) dedicated to Li-ion battery research (2008-2018).

He is currently leading, on behalf of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the National Strategy of Acceleration on Batteries (PEPR Batteries), a national program launched in January 2023. He is also Deputy Director of the French network on Electrochemical Energy Storage (RS2E, www.energie-rs2e.com) since its creation in 2011, that gathers together about 20 Labs and 15 companies working on batteries and supercapacitors.

His research activities focus on the fundamental understanding of electrochemical processes occurring at the material / electrolyte interfaces in electrodes for electrochemical energy storage devices (batteries and electrochemical capacitors). He published about 250 papers (>70,000 citations), more than 10 book chapters and gave about 100 invited conferences.

He received several awards for his scientific contribution including Grants from the European Research Council (2012, 2020), the RSC Horizon Prize (2021), the Conway Prize in Electrochemistry from ISE (2018), the International RussNanoprize (2015), the Silver Medal from the CNRS (2015). He is Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2017), Honorary Professor at Sichuan University (2019), Honorary Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology (2019), visiting Professor at Tokyo University of Technology since 2015 one month a year (interrupted by Covid). He is Highly Cited Researcher since 2016 (Clarivate Analytics).

Patrice Simon is member of the French Academy of Sciences (2019) and French Academy of Technology (2018), the European Academy of Sciences (2019), and former member of the Institut Universitaire de France Junior (2007) and Senior (2017).

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 17 March 2023

Speaker: Andrea Alù

Talk: Extreme Control of Light and Sound with Metamaterials

ABSTRACT

The field of metamaterials, artificial materials engineered at the nanoscale, has been rapidly evolving in the past two decades, demonstrating extreme wave phenomena and unprecedented control over wave propagation. In this talk, I discuss recent developments in this field of research, with an emphasis on the role of symmetries in establishing emerging optical and acoustic responses for metamaterials based on otherwise simple constituents. Geometrical rotations, suitably tailored perturbations, and broken time reversal symmetry can be carefully engaged to tailor waves in robust and efficient ways, control their propagation, break Lorentz reciprocity and enable topological order and phase transitions. I will discuss the underlying physical principles that span over many wave platforms, and their impact on practical technologies, from imaging, energy and sensing to computing and communications.

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 14 March 2023

Speaker: Renyun Zhang

Talk 1: The opportunities for the human body’s triboelectricity

ABSTRACT

The human body does many physical movements that contain a large amount of information representing a person’s: emotions, physical condition, moods, etc. When doing these movements, interactions with surroundings such as cloth, socks, shoes, doors, tables, etc., generate triboelectric charges on the human body due to the skin’s high positive charge affinity. By analyzing the changes in the triboelectric charges on the human body, and the interaction of the charge with other devices, we can gain much information about the human body and realize interactions with devices. Results from our lab have shown that the generated triboelectric charges could be an energy source for powering small electronics, a signal source for human-computer interaction, and digital security. Potential application in biomedical applications is expected in the near future.

BIOGRAPHY

Renyun Zhang is an associate professor in Nanotechnology at Mid Sweden University. He received his PhD in 2007 in Biomedical Engineering at Southeast University and then spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Mid Sweden University. He has published about 100 peer-reviewed articles in Advanced Materials, Nano Energy, EcoMat, etc. His research focuses on energy harvesting technology and transparent thin films.

Speaker: Xiaoyue Ni

Talk 2: Human-Centered Materials Intelligence

ABSTRACT

Achieving dynamic control over physical properties of materials is an ultimate aspiration of many engineering sciences. The past decades have witnessed phenomenal investment in developing smart materials that can transform and respond to various external stimuli. However, current approaches are mainly off-line and prescribed: design, processing, and characterization of the materials occur only prior to their deployment. In this talk, I will introduce a pathway to enable real-time human-materials interaction by creating advanced digital-physical interfaces that connect humans with materials. To interface with humans, the key challenge is to monitor human signals comfortably and accurately. I will show how epidermal electronics that incorporate high-bandwidth MEMS accelerometers capture multitudes of mechanical and acoustic processes of human body, ranging from broad classes of physiological information to precision kinematics of the core body. The technique has enabled continuous monitoring of unconventional respiratory biomarkers along with important vital signs in the ongoing pandemic setting. To interface with materials, I will describe recent advances in active metamaterials, and how the area of research at the interface between microstructural mechanics, flexible electronics, and non-destructive testing offers new capabilities for developing programmable matter with digital access to the structure, process, and properties. Based on the two platform technologies, I will conclude by discussing new opportunities in developing human-centered materials intelligence – with material properties and human signals digitized in a loop, the materials can sense user status or actions, swiftly adapt their microstructures, and henceforth their functional properties on demand. Such an interactive platform will support a rich range of applications in materials design, soft robotics, and autonomous medical devices.

BIOGRAPHY

Xiaoyue Ni is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Duke University. Her current research focuses on two primary areas: developing wearable electronics for continuous, noninvasive monitoring of human body mechanics and tissue-level diagnosis, and creating programmable and robotic metamaterials for materials intelligence. She received her Ph.D. degree in Materials Science from the California Institute of Technology in 2017, where she worked on nanomechanics focusing on resolving fundamental physics of dislocation-mediated plasticity. She received her M.S. degree in Materials Science from Caltech in 2014. She holds a B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics with a Minor in Economics from Marietta College in 2012.

Speaker: Sihong Wang

Talk 3: Biomimetic Polymer Electronics

ABSTRACT

The vast amount of biological mysteries and biomedical challenges faced by humans provide a prominent drive for seamlessly merging electronics with biological living systems (e.g. human bodies) to achieve long-term stable functions. Towards this trend, one of the key requirements for electronics is to possess biomimetic form factors in various aspects for achieving long-term biocompatibility. To enable such paradigm-shifting requirements, polymer-based electronics are uniquely promising for combining advanced electronic functionalities with biomimetic properties. In this talk, I will introduce our new molecular-design, chemical-synthesis, and physical-processing concepts for polymer semiconductors, which enabled the incorporation of multiple biomimetic properties with advanced electronic and photonic functionalities. Furthermore, enabled by these new materials, we have also created new device designs and fabrication processes for building unprecedented functional devices, including stretchable and bioadhesive biosensors, stretchable neuromorphic devices,  and stretchable OLEDs, which all simultaneously achieve high performance and new biomimetic properties. Collectively, our research is opening up a new generation of electronics that fundamentally changes the way that humans interact with electronics.

BIOGRAPHY

Sihong Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014, and his Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University in 2009. From 2015 to 2018, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. He has published over 70 papers in numerous high-impact journals, including Nature, Science, Nature Materials, Nature Electronics, Matter, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, Energy & Environmental Science, etc. His research group currently focuses on soft polymeric bioelectronic materials and devices as the new generation of technology for biomedical studies and practices. As of Feb. 2023, his research has been cited more than 20,800 times and he has an H-index of 59. He was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics from 2020 to 2022, and was awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35 Global List), Advanced Materials Rising Star Award, ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award, iCANX Young Scientist Award, MRS Graduate Student Award, Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Students Abroad, Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2012 by Physics World, etc.

website: www.ican-x.com

Date: 10 March 2023

Speaker: Federico Rosei

Talk: Multifunctional Materials for Emerging Technologies

ABSTRACT

This presentation focuses on structure property/relationships in advanced materials, emphasizing multifunctional systems that exhibit multiple functionalities. Such systems are then used as building blocks for the fabrication of various emerging technologies. In particular, nanostructured materials synthesized via the bottom–up approach present an opportunity for future generation low cost manufacturing of devices. We focus in particular on recent developments in solar technologies that aim to address the energy challenge, including third generation photovoltaics, solar hydrogen production, luminescent solar concentrators and other optoelectronic devices.

BIOGRAPHY

Federico Rosei (MSc (1996) and PhD (2001) from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”) is Full Professor at the Centre Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Varennes (QC) Canada, where he served as Director (07/2011–03/2019). He held the Canada Research Chair (Junior) in Nanostructured Organic and Inorganic Materials (2003–2013) and since May 2016 he holds the Canada Research Chair (Senior) in Nanostructured Materials. Since January 2014 he holds the UNESCO Chair in Materials and Technologies for Energy Conversion, Saving and Storage. Dr. Rosei’s research interests focus on structure/property relationships in nanomaterials and their use as building blocks in emerging technologies. He is co-inventor of three patents and has published over 435 articles in prestigious international journals, has been invited to speak at over 340 international conferences and has given over 255 seminars and colloquia, over 60 professional development lectures and 45 public lectures in 48 countries on all inhabited continents. His publications have been cited over 20,200 times and his H index is 75.

He is Fellow of numerous prestigious national and international societies and academies, including: the Royal Society of Canada, the European Academy of Science, the Academia Europaea, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the African Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, AAAS, the American Ceramic Society, Optica, SPIE, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, ASM International, Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society, Foreign Member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering and Foreign Member of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. He has received several awards and honours, including a junior (2003–2013) and a senior (2016–2023) Canada Research Chair, a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award (Humboldt foundation 2011), the Rutherford Medal in Chemistry (Royal Society of Canada 2011), the José Vasconcelos Award for Education (World Cultural Council 2014), the IEEE NTC Distinguished Lectureship 2015–2016, the Chang Jiang Scholar Award (China), the Khwarizmi International Award (Iran), the Recognition for Excellence in Mentorship (American Vacuum Society 2015), the Selby Fellowship (Australian Academy of Sciences 2016), the President’s Visiting Fellowship for Distinguished Scientists (Chinese Academy of Sciences 2017), the Changbai Mountain Friendship Award (2018), the APS John Wheatley Award (2019), the Blaise Pascal Medal (European Academy of Science 2019), the IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lectureship (2020–2022), the Guangxi Golden Silkball Friendship Award, the TMS Brimacombe Medal (2021), the Wolfson Fellowship (Royal Society), and the Prix du Quebec “Marie Victorin” (2021).

website: www.ican-x.com

NASEM Workshop: A Transformational Africa-US STEM University Partnership

The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is holding a virtual workshop on “A Transformational Africa-US STEM University Partnership”.

Dates: 14-16 March  2022

Time: 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM EDT (2 to 5 PM GMT).

The workshop brings together government ministers, senior policy makers, university leaders, scientists, academics and the private sector, from Africa and the United States. Over three days, it will review experiences, achievements, and best practices of recent large-scale initiatives to build STEM research and education capacity on the continent. It will also identify priorities for joint work and innovative modalities for collaboration between US and African universities.

Please register here.

The tentative workshop agenda is available here or here.

Supporting document here.

Questions about the workshop can be sent to USAfricaSTEM@nas.edu.

5th International Conference of Young Researchers on Advanced Materials (IUMRS-ICYRAM2022)

AESEDA – Indaba – Black History Month Seminar with Dr. Joseph J. Berry

Title: Advances in PV Toward More Efficient, Just and Sustainable Energy Technologies”

Dr. Joseph J. Berry is a Distinguished Alumnus in the Department of Physics at Penn State University, and Senior Research Fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). His efforts at NREL emphasize relating basic interfacial properties to relevant device level behaviors in traditional and novel semiconductor heterostructures including oxides, organics and most recently hybrid semiconductors.

Date: Thursday, February 24th, 2022 at 1pm (EST)

Register here

Find more on the talk here 

UNECA 3rd Youth Innovators Design Bootcamp & Africa Regional Science, Technology and Innovation Forum

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and its partners are pleased to invite you to the third Youth Innovators Design Bootcamp to held from 21– 25 February 2022 with special focus on Disruptive Energy and Water Technologies and Innovations for Sustainable and Inclusive Development, and to the fourth Africa Regional Science, Technology and Innovation Forum  that will be held 1 to 2 March 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Bootcamp will focus on disruptive emerging technologies and their applications in energy and water. The two fields – energy and water  – are selected given their relationship to life under water (SDG 14) and life on land (SDG 15).  This new approaches in energy and water generation, processing, management, storage, distribution and monitoring could have major implications for millions of Africans that are currently underserved.  Hence, the Youth Innovation Forum Bootcamp will expose youths to different approaches to address community and global challenges on water supply and energy needs that is accessible and affordable for Africa’s growing population.

Application Deadline: 10 February 2022

Be informed that your project ideas for the forum would be selected based on the quality of your applications.

Application form for STI Forum Bootcamp

Visit the UNECA website for more information 

ANSOLE´s 11th Anniversary International Online Conference

(A 2 IOC 2022)

Date: 4 February 2022

Registration and abstract submission deadline: 28 January 2022

ANSOLE celebrates its 11th anniversary through an international online conference A²IOC 2022 on February 4th, 2022. The event is co-hosted by Zewail City of Science and Technology, Gizeh, Cairo, Egypt and Université Mohammed 5 de Rabat, Morocco.

A 2 IOC enables our members worldwide to celebrate together and
“talk science” from their sitting rooms. The 2022 edition is co-hosted by Assistant
Professors Dr. Shaimaa Ali Mohamed Ahmed (Zewail City, Egypt) and Dr. Safae Aazou
(UM5Rabat, Morocco).

Visit the website

Read registration guide

Read on “Electrify Africa 2030”

Nanotechnology for a Healthier and Sustainable Future 

This is a virtual launch of a summit event happening in Summer 2022 focused on Good health and well being.

Date: 22 – 23 February 2022

The International Network for Sustainable Nanotechnology (also known as “International Network4Sustainable Nanotechnology”) is a consortium of leading organizations in the field of nanotechnology, representing institutes, universities, non-profit and governmental agencies.

Read more on the network’s official site

View event flyer

Merck Foundation Africa Research Summit – MARS 2022

The summit aims to empower Women and Youth in Research.
Merck Foundation Africa Research Summit – MARS 2022 will have scientific support from African Union Scientific, Technical and Research Commission (AU-STRC), Infectious  Diseases Institute, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kenya Medical  Research Institute (KEMRI) Graduate School, Advanced Center for  Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), India and Merck Foundation.

Deadline: 31 July 2022

Date of Summit: 15 November 2022

Visit the Merck Website for more information

Watch the Merck Foundation video

The Chemical Society of Department of Chemistry is thrilled to invite you in a special talk by Prof. Dr. Dr. (h. c.) Sanjay Mathur (University of Cologne)

Date: 21 December 2021 (Tuesday)

Time: 5pm to 6pm. IST. (1:30pm GMT+2)

Topic: Chemically Processed Functional Ceramics for Energy and Health Applications

Prof. Sanjay Mathur is currently a Director and Chair, Inorganic and Materials Chemistry, University of Cologne. He is a recipient of many prestigious Awards and recognition such as Wood White Award (USA), Lifetime Achievement Award ISCA (India), AkzoNobel Surface Innovator Award, World Class University Distinguished Professor, and many more.” His research group is currently doing prominent work in the field of Inorganic and Materials Chemistry especially, chemical concepts for synthesis and processing of nanostructured ceramics and composites for energy and health applications. Details of the talk by Prof. Sanjay Mathur, his research and publications are attached with this email for your reference. Further details are available in the official website: Research Group Mathur 

Link to join online webinar: https://iitjodhpur.webex.com/iitjodhpur/j.php?MTID=m44c8774d54e20d96f9bab66b35f28f7e

Webinar and Faculty Interaction at IIT Jodhpur
Hosted by Head, Chemistry

https://iitjodhpur.webex.com/iitjodhpur/j.php?MTID=m44c8774d54e20d96f9bab66b35f28f7e
Tuesday, Dec 21, 2021 4:30 pm | 2 hours 30 minutes | (UTC+05:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi
Meeting number: 2527 760 6857
Password: 4Ae8RszFRb3

Join by video system
Dial 25277606857@iitjodhpur.webex.com
You can also dial 210.4.202.4 and enter your meeting number.

Join by phone
+65-3157-6442 Singapore Toll
Access code: 252 776 06857

Second Workshop of the US-Africa Initiative in Electronic Structure (USAfrI)

Date: 25 – 29 May 2021

Deadline for Application:
Deadline: 21 December 2021
Late application deadline: 31 December 2021

“The U.S.– Africa Initiative in Electronic Structure (USAfri) aims to create a platform for exchange between African and U.S. physicists with opportunities to have a major impact on research and education in Africa. Electronic Structure is a natural choice because it is an essential part of research with applications in many fields, and there is a network of capable researchers in Africa generated by sustained efforts over the past 10 years.

The U.S.-Africa Initiative in Electronic Structure is supported by of the Innovation Fund of the American Physical Society.”

Visit the initiative website for more information

Read more here

African School of Physics (ASP) Seminar

Title: Iron sulphide functionalized polyaniline nanocomposite for the removal of Eosin Y from water—equilibrium and kinetic studies

Date: Tuesday 30 November2021

Time: 13:00 UTC / 15:00 CAT

Speaker: Dr. Bernice Yram Danu (Ghana)

Affiliation: University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana

Alumnus: ASP2012

Details and registration:

https://indico.cern.ch/event/1098229/

Zoom Meeting ID: 92372698210

Passcode:  20102022

https://cern.zoom.us/j/92372698210?pwd=VDk4c1NKQ1gySFY4QWV6QXFVNU1kQT09

EAIFR Seminar on Dark Matter

Title: DARK MATTER AND BOHR-SOMMERFELD ENHANCEMENT – WORK IN PROGRESS

Date: 23 November 2021

Time: 16:00 HRS (GMT+2 = Kigali Time)

Venue: EAIFR, top floor (EINSTEIN Block, Former “KIST2” Building of UR-CST, Nyarugenge)

Speaker: Musongela-Kikunga-Mafuta (UNIKIN, DRC)

View flyer

ARUA 2021 BIENNIAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Title: Global Public Health Challenges: Facing Them in Africa

Dates: 17 – 19 November 2021

View the conference flyer

More information and Registration

JOINT AMRS-BITRI WEBINAR AND PANEL DISCUSSION

Theme: “Towards Sustainable Energy for African Development” 

Date: 9 November 2021

Time: 16:00 – 18:00 (GMT+2)

Register for webinar

View Programme

Pan-African Physics Roadmap—Community Discussion

An invitation to an open discussion about how to get involved and participate in the African Physics Strategy (ASFAP). There will be a short introduction of the current status and plan for ASFAP, followed by a panel discussion.

NANO Boston Conference 2021

United Scientific Group (USG) cordially invites all the participants from around the world to attend Seventh International Conference on Nanotechnology “NANO Boston Conference”

NANO Boston Conference aims to provide high-quality current reports of scientific progress and best practices in Nanotech through its invited presentations & submitted abstracts. The conference is designed to encourage the exchange of ideas across a range of disciplines.

Theme: “NANO FOR A BETTER WORLD”

Dates: 18-20 October  2021

For more information and registration visit http://nanoworldconference.com

10th  International Conference on Advanced Fibers and Polymer Materials (ICAFPM)

Theme: Better Fiber, Better World

Dates: 17-20 October 2021

ICAFPM was initiated and hosted by the State Key Laboratory of Fiber Material Modification (Donghua University) to discuss the latest research and developments in various fields related to advanced fibers and polymer materials. Open up the frontiers of fiber and polymer research.

Read more on there website

Joint virtual meeting of the African Light Source (AfLS), the African Physical Society (AfPS), and Pan African Conference on Crystallography (ePCCr)

Call for registrations and abstracts for the November 2021 African Light Source conference!

View conference poster

View Pan-African Conference on Crystallography poster