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PhD’s students from INL awarded at the 40th International Conference on Environmental & Food Monitoring

INLers Soraia Fernandes and Monisha Elumalai were awarded at the 40th International Conferences on Environmental & Food Monitoring, held this month in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Soraia Fernandes, a PhD student, working with our Nanochemistry and Water Quality Research Groups, won the “Roland W. Frei” Poster Award for “Novel magnetic covalent organic framework composites for the absorption of diarrheic shellfish poisoning toxins.” Monisha Elumalai, a PhD students, working with INL’s Food Quality and Safety Research Group, won the best young researcher oral presentation by the ISEAC-40 organisation for “Early detection of zebra mussel assisted by modified gold nanoparticle amplification”. Congratulations to both, it is with great pride that we testimony INLers achievements!

EuroNanoLab scales up nanostructuration in Europe

EuroNanoLab is an initiative to establish a large-scale distributed nanofabrication research infrastructure, and INL’s Cleanroom is one of the facilities available. This initiative brings together most of the European academic clean rooms, the place where future technology is already happening. Gabriel Chardin, from CNRS, the consortium coordinating organisation, explains why this is a major step towards a new era, in an opinion article you may read here.

Plug and play anisotropy-based nanothermometers

The Ultrafast Bio and Nanophotonics group have developed a novel Plug and Play Nanothermosensor technology with relevance for molecular biochemistry at INL, led by J. Nieder and international collaborators. The novel technique allows a new level of access to measure temperate at the molecular scale. Read the full article in ACS Photonics.

Little scientists share their experiences at INL

INL and the University of Minho, partners of “Try to Share” Project, developed by Biblioteca Escolar Porto Maia da EB2,3 of Real, aims to allow children to build scientific experiments and lab activities based on the scientific method, defining objectives, material, procedures and conclusions of each experiment. After one year of hard work, 110 small scientists from Real School Grouping set up a conference in the INL garden – Outdoor Lab – where they presented posters, made scientific demonstrations and answered questions from the audience. To finish the day, the little scientists plant a tree in INL’s garden to symbolise a seed for education. This event was also scheduled for the World Humanist Day to celebrate the first year of the project.

CLIB students win entrepreneurship competition with INL support

A team of students from CLIB – Colégio Luso Internacional de Braga recently won the 11th National Competition, promoted by Junior Achievement Portugal, the Portuguese chapter of the oldest organization in the world promoting education for entrepreneurship. The five 10th graders – four girls and one boy -, mentored by INLer João Piteira, will represent Portugal in the European Competition, that will take place next 16th to 19th of July in Belgrade, Serbia, with the mini-company “Extinctus Enterprise”. This project was inspired by the response to the tragic forest fires that hit Portugal in 2017. The technology prototype, developed with INL support, is an underground Ignis Capsule containing a radio, a battery and a temperature sensor. In case of fire, it detects the heat and sends a signal to firefighters. Another CLIB team – also from the 10th grade – mentored by INLers Dmitri Petrovykh, Cláudia Sousa and Eurico Moreira, got the second place in the same competition with the SOS – Seniors On Surveillance project, for developing the concept of a high-tech Safelet bracelet equipped with alert buttons and sensors to promote independence, autonomy and safety for senior citizens. In addition to the technical mentoring, INLer Francisco Guimarães helped […]

Covalent organic frameworks capture pharmaceutical pollutants from water

A team of scientists from the Nanochemistry and Water Quality groups at INL, CRSTRA in Algeria, LMU in Germany, and GalChimia in Spain have developed a fluorine-bearing covalent organic framework (COF), and showed, for the first time, that this class of materials can be used to capture pharmaceutical pollutants from water. Lipophilic pharmaceuticals, such as ibuprofen, were adsorbed from the water with high efficiency and completely recovered by simple solvent exchange. As opposed to many other adsorbents such as activated carbon, the developed COF can be efficiently recycled for reuse. Read the full article in Chemistry-A European Journal.

Exploring two dimensional magnets with quantum tunnelling

A team of scientist from MIT, NIMS in Japan, Iowa State University and INL, have fabricated a new type of magnetic tunnel junctions where the tunnel barrier is made of a newly discovered two-dimensional magnet. This permits them to probe the magnetic properties of this new material and unveil unknown aspects of its magnetic behaviour. In addition, the devices present a very large magnetoresistance, the variation of electrical resistance upon application of magnetic fields, that forms the basis to many applications. J. Fernández-Rossier, from INL, said that “these experiments, take advantage of electron tunnelling across these magnetic materials to explore magnons”. These findings have been reported in the prestigious journal Science, edited by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, on May 3, 2018. Read the full article here.

KET4CleanProduction OPEN CALLS for SMEs

>> OPEN CALLS for SMEs << KET4CleanProduction is the new program tailored to support Manufacturing SMEs to tackle clean production challenges. The program’s Micro Grants aim to integrate Key Enabling Technologies in small businesses to promote the efficient use of resources, minimise environmental impact and increase business profitability and competitiveness. Selected SMEs will have access to technology services and facilities for clean production innovation through a premier Network of Technology Centres. About the MicroGrants: Scope: Micro Grants are offered for cross-border cooperation projects between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and minimum 2 KET technology centres (KET TCs), which aim to integrate key enabling technologies (KET) to solve clean production challenges. Call Opening: 1st June 2018 Call Closing: 29th April 2020, 17:00 CET Cut-off dates: 8 cut-off days at 17:00 CET on 31st July 2018, 31st October 2018, 31st January 2019, 30th April 2019, 31st July 2019, 31st October 2019, 31st January 2020, 30th April 2020 Expected Duration of a micro-grant project: up to 6 months Maximum amount of financial support for each third party: EUR 50.000 (provided as lump sum). A micro-grant covers 70% of the total project costs. The remaining 30% have to be provided by the applicant SME […]

INL takes part in the EuroNanoLab’s consortium

Portugal, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic have created the EuroNanoLab consortium, an initiative to establish a large-scale distributed nanofabrication research infrastructure and expertise to increase the quality, efficiency and relevance of European basic research within nanotechnology. In Europe, there are at least seventy European university nanofabrication centres of large or medium size, which develop their know-how without any real coordination. Conscious of this dispersion, several European countries have already created national networks of academic cleanrooms to foster collaboration at the national level. This consortium currently includes 26 academic clean rooms, representing a total value of 1.5 billion euros and will be distributed on a European scale and will be able to develop a common strategy and support major European programs such as the Graphene, Human Brain or Quantum Flagships, as well as major European programs. which will undoubtedly emerge later. For more information on the project visit the EuroNanoLab website. Latest news regarding the EuroNanoLab project.