1st Annual ICON Conference, Athens

On April 7th 2017, Becky was an invited speaker at the International Consortium of Nanotechnology's (ICON) 1st Annual Conference. This Consortium provides funding for a global network of PhD students working in a wide variety of nanotechnology fields such as graphene and perovskite solar cells. ICON is an initiative funded by the Lloyd's Register Foundation (LRF), who also supports Becky's fellowship. The LRF are a charity committed to improving the safety standards in engineering across the globe, and to promote scientific education, with ICON being one of their flagship schemes.    

The conference was a mix of fascinating talks about ICON, the LRF, and presentations from the PhD students themselves each of whom had three minutes to explain their work. Each speaker rose to the challenge and it was a great introduction to their work and to the later poster session. 

Becky's talk was about where a career in nanoscience could lead, by drawing on her experiences as both a PhD and PDRA. Following on from the experiences of an LRF-funded PhD student coming to the end of her work, Becky gave a brief introduction to her work and a few hints for the assembled PhD students on getting the most out of their PhDs.

The conference was held in central Athens, Greece, and provided the delegates with the opportunity to explore the wonderful historical sites in the city, including the fantastic conference dinner which was held at the Acropolis Museum, with views of Acropolis Hill and the Parthenon. 

From Bits to Batteries - Cafe Scientifique Post-Mortem

On Monday, April 3rd, FMD group member, Dr Chris Handley, gave his talk, "From Bits to Batteries", to a public audience thanks to the local Café Scientifique organisation. Café Scientifique is place for academics and researchers to present their work to a public audience, consisting largely of non-experts. Outreach opportunities such as these are an ideal way to demonstrate the value of academic research, and the value of investment into research.

Douglas Bell, who helps organise the Sheffield Café Scientifique events was able to attend,

"Christopher explained the chemistry and the computation approaches clearly. He displayed both in-depth knowledge and enormous enthusiasm for the topics. Visuals were rich in useful diagrams and animations. He handled questions sensitively and helpfully.

The talk was pitched just right for an audience with limited science background. It was well received and fitted well within the programme of Café Scientifique."

Chris' talk demonstrated the importance of computational simulations as a underpinning research tool for materials design and discovery, and generated some excellent discussion, with audience members eager to further understand the future implications of machine learning in the field, and further examples of how simulation and experiment works in tandem within the FMD group.

In the future we hope to present more of our work at these public gatherings, and perhaps have PhD students give shorter presentations as a group.