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The featured article on the cover of Small, titled "Ratiometric Nanothermometer Based on a Radical Excimer for In Vivo Sensing" and led by Jaume Veciana and Imma Ratera from the Nanomol-Bio Group (ICMAB, CIBER-BBN) and their team, investigates organic nanoparticles based on persistent TTM radicals. In vivo experiments demonstrate that these nanoparticles function as ratiometric nanothermometers, showing significant promise in the field of biological thermometry.

The research article titled "Boron clusters (ferrabisdicarbollides), shaping the future as radiosensitizers for multimodal (chemo/radio/PBFR) therapy of glioblastoma," has been selected for the 'Most Popular' collection in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

In their recent ARA newspaper article titled "Fusió nuclear: utopia o realitat?" (Nuclear Fusion: Utopia or Reality?), researchers Xavier Obrador and Teresa Puig provide a comprehensive overview of the international pursuit of a functional nuclear fusion reactor.

Núria Aliaga-Alcalde and Martí Gich have been honoured with European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept (PoC) grants valued at €150,000 each.

The cover illustrates the review "Direct Bottom-Up In Situ Growth: A Paradigm Shift for Studies in Wet-Chemical Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticles" published in Chemical Reviews. 

On Monay, 10 July 2023, the ICMAB hosts a memorial event in the memory of Prof. Pablo Etchegoin(1964-2013), Argentine-New Zealand physicist.

June is known around the world as the LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots in June 1969 that started an LGBTQIA+ rights movement. It is internationally celebrated with marches, exhibitions, parades and festivals.

EmErgEnt Award from the Efficient Energy Cluster in Catalunya (Clúster de l’Energia Eficient de Catalunya, CEEC) in the "Llavor" category for a patented instrument at ICMAB to optimize photovoltaic cells.

The Seminars and Training Committee kindly invites you to the following Periodical Lecture on very thin and small carbon materials:

The #JPhD2023, an event entirely organized by PhD fellows, grows larger with each edition, surpassing the 110 participants!

The complete collection of CSIC Scientific Challenges: towards 2030, the CSIC White Paper formed by 14 volumes, is now available on paper in our ICMAB Manuel Cardona library (and available for loan), in the handbooks section. 

The new APL Energy journal is presented to the ICN2, ICMAB and IMB-CNM community on Tuesday, 6 June 2023.

APL Energy is a new gold open access journal from AIP Publishing featuring research related to energy, applications of energy storage and conversion, energy sources and materials, and renewable energy and sustainability. The journal also considers research that addresses the environmental impacts of energy technologies.

Come to this morning session and discover this new opportunity: a new journal and some tips to publish and increase the impact of your research.

On 15 May 2023, the first call for doctoral contracts within the DocFam+ (Doctoral training programme in Functional Advanced Materials) MSCA-COFUND coordinated by ICMAB-CSIC will open. 

DocFam+ is a 5-year doctoral training programme in Functional Advanced Materials presented by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and coordinated through the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) in collaboration with several partner research institutions from the region, six of them contributing to the co-funding of the programme: Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM-CSIC), Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC), High Energy Physics Institute (IFAE), Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and ALBA Synchrotron.

Find out more about the UAB's MSc and PhDs at the fair organized on 22-26 May 2023 at the UAB. 

This year the recommended books are the ones that they just read and liked. The list is very diverse, you will find graphic novels, science fiction, travel books, science fiction and much more.

Enjoy the read and happy Sant Jordi!

By the way, do you know why is Sant Jordi the saint patron of Catalunya? And what do we do in this special day? Read below for more info! 

InCAEM, In Situ Correlative Facility for Advanced Energy Materials, is a new facility, now in construction at the ALBA Synchrotron premises, open to all the scientific community for studying advanced materials.

On Friday, 14 April 2023, more than 70 members from different Catalan research institutions attended a workshop where the facility was presented, and explored collaboration opportunities.

On Friday, 14 April 2023, we received the visit of the "Sol i Lluna" school from Castellar del Vallès. The students aged 11-12 years old could experience some of the science at ICMAB and ICN2.

The students of the "Sol i Lluna" school in Castellar del Vallès participate in the project NanoInventum, in which they learn concepts of nanoscience and nanotechnology and have to create nanorobots with extraordinary properties to solve some of the problems of our live.

In last year's edition of the NanoInventum project, one of the prizes (the Technology Prize) was a visit to the ICMAB labs, to see how researchers work and to see some topics of nanoscience and nanotechnology. 

Sergi Riera-Galindo, ICMAB researcher, is the IP of this project awarded by the Barcelona City Council to young and emerging research projects. 

The ceremony was held on Monday, 20 March at the Barcelona City Council (at the Saló de Cent) and a diploma was given to each researcher of the eighteen winning projects.  

Sergi Riera's project is titled "Bus stop integrated organic photovoltaics (TERRA)" and is granted with 60,000 €. The project aims to integrate stable organic photovoltaics mini-modules on bus stops to power light devices for a future smart city.  

ICMAB played an essential role in the development of the high-temperature superconductors installed in this new NMR.

Take a look at the amazing scientific disseminators that spread knowledge through social media and to the books related to women in science that people recommended us!

This year, to commemorate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science from the Gender Equality Committee we asked people to recommend us:

• • scientific disseminators, communicators
  • influencers and
  • books related to women in science.

And we received more than 60 answers from different people, schools, universities, etc. 

Muhammad Ahsan Saeed will work on indoor organic photovoltaics, Silvia Damerio on spintronic devices and Daniel Martin on organic electronic devices. 

The Marie Sklodowska Curie (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships (PF) 2022 call results were announced by the European Commission in February 2023. The call will facilitate the incorporation of 1,235 experienced postdoctoral researchers to R+D institutions (research centers, universities, private and public organisation and small and medium-sized enterprises), 177of them in Spain, 31 of them at the CSIC, and 3 of them here at ICMAB.

More than one hundred CSIC scientists meet to promote the energy transition. ICMABers M. Rosa Palacín and Teresa Puig participate in the meeting. 

• This cutting-edge facility will house two high-end electron microscopes: one to determine the structure of large protein complexes and another to study materials at atomic level.
• Created thanks to the joint effort of several research institutes, the centre is located at the ALBA Synchrotron and will be open to the entire scientific community.
• Catalan Research and Universities Minister Joaquim Nadal inaugurates the centre, which has received funding from the Catalan Government’s ERDF programme, on 24 February.

In article published in Advanced Sensor Research, Anna Palau and co-workers study permalloy strips with substrate-induced uniaxial anisotropy, since they offer the possibility to produce fast in-plane magnetization reversals triggered by an out-of-plane magnetic field.

Transifere is a professional, multisector forum aimed at knowledge transfer, with a focus on business opportunities and networking. It is one of the biggest events in the south of Europe.

Themed panels and conferences afford attendees the chance to get information from relevant sources in science, technology and business. The topic of this year's Transfiere is "Boosting Innovation". 

PHOENIX-OITB’s mission is to offer a Single-Entry-Point for a consolidated network of facilities, technologies, services and expertise for all the technology transfer aspects:

In the next conference of the IEC "Dijous de ciència" the talk will be by M. Rosa Palacín on batteries.

The Science and Technology Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans invites you to the conference of the 2023 Science and Technology Thursday cycle—research at the service of society—, which will be given by M. Rosa Palacín, research professor at the 'Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB) of the CSIC, and which will be entitled "Batteries and materials: where do we come from and where are we going".

2023 is the year of the 7^th edition of the Scientific Meeting of PhD candidates! The registration and abstract submission for the annual conference JPhD are now open!

Please register for the event designed and conceived from and for PhD candidates that will take place on the 7^th and 8^th of June 2023 at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Campus, at ICMAB.

The cover illustrates the article "Boron clusters (ferrabisdicarbollides) shaping the future as radiosensitizers for multimodal (chemo/radio/PBFR) therapy of glioblastoma". 

The Horizon Europe project NABIHEAL, coordinated by the Center for Biomedical Research Network (CIBER) at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), was launched on 11-12 January 2023 in Barcelona with the first meeting of the international consortium, formed by 14 partners from 7 countries, including research centers, universities, and private companies. 

From ICMAB, researcher Arántzazu González-Campo and her team participates in this new EIC Pathfinder Horizon Europe project.

The Horizon Europe SynEry project, coordinated by KU Leuven (Belgium), started its activity on April 2022 with the first meeting of the international consortium, formed by four partners, including ICMAB-CSIC. 

Sign up before 9 January 2023 to the III Conference AMIT-CAT on "Women in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology" to be held in Barcelona.

The DONESNANO2023 conference is organized by AMIT-CAT, Association of Women Researchers and Technologists in Catalonia (AMIT-CAT) and is sponsored by the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC).

The conference will take place on Wednesday, 8 February 2023, at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) in Barcelona.

DONESNANO2023 will be a meeting point to share experiences and knowledge in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Last Wednesday, 14 December, we celebrated Christmas at ICMAB. The event was in honour of Xavier Granados, Clara Viñas, and Francesc Teixidor, and included some surprises for all the staff! 

The morning started at 10:30 h with a session in which the three ICMAB researchers who retire this year: Xavier Granados, Clara Viñas, and Francesc Teixidor, talked about their first years at ICMAB.

With some questions from the audience, they talked about how and why they arrived at ICMAB, what was research like in the beginning of their research career, and how was, for example, the differences between women in science now and then. 

On 17-18 November 2022, the ICMAB Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) visited the ICMAB to evaluate the research lines and the overall performance of the Institute. 

Welcome to ARPES 2023, our Severo Ochoa School on Angle Resolved Photoemision Spectroscopy (ARPES): from fundamentals to the heart of condensed matter.

A school on photoelectron spectroscopy for beginners, organized by ICMAB-CSIC with the collaboration of ALBA Synchrotron, on 6-7 February 2023. 

In the era of Quantum Technologies, understanding and mapping electronic excitations has proved to be instrumental to identify emerging properties of matter. Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES) is a major tool to inspect the intricate playground of charge-spin lattice interactions and how they affect the properties of the electronic degrees of freedom.

This year marks the 40th edition of an award that has the purpose to distinguish a person from the Bages culture for the dissemination work within a particular artistic and cultural sphere.

"Moltes gràcies a tots i desitjo un magnífic futur a l’impuls incansable de les iniciatives d’Òmnium Cultural, de la ciutat de Manresa, de la comarca del Bages i de tota la Catalunya interior" - Xavier Obradors.

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the CSIC Women and Science Committee and the CSIC Delegate Committee for Equality have prepared the following joint communication. 

The ICMAB Gender Equality Committee at ICMAB works to ensure that there are no inequalities or discriminations for reasons of gender, race, age, nationality at ICMAB, is the main consultation point for anyone who has any issue regarding these topics, and makes available all the resources and tools (from CSIC, MCIN...) to the ICMAB staff and provides training in the matter, so they know what to do when something related to work or sexual harassment, inequalities, bias, or any other discrimination happens. 

On 18 November at 9:30 a.m. the UAB offices of the Vice Rector for Innovation and Strategic Projects and the Vice Rector for Students and Employability organise a "Science and Entrepreneurship in Feminine" seminar to raise awareness of women standing out in innovation and entrepreneurship at the UAB campus.