Researchers from VSB-TUO had a great turnout at the 16th annual Nanocon conference that took place in Brno from 15 to 17 October. Radek Zboril, the head of the Materials Envi Lab (MEL) at the CEET Nanotechnology Centre, traditionally served as the expert guarantor for this international event. The invited speakers included Mark Rümmeli, recipient of the prestigious ERA Chairs EBEAM grant, and Jacky Advani from MEL, who discussed environmental applications during one of the sessions. Other researchers from VSB-TUO also shared their expertise and insights throughout the program and made significant contributions to the poster session.
“We had top plenary speakers at the conference again this year. We are collaborating with nanotoxicology expert Bengt Fadeel from Karolinska Institute who focuses on elucidating the mechanisms of toxicity of nanomaterials and in particular studying their effects on the immune system to develop materials with anti-cancer activity. Additionally, Iván Mora-Seró from Universitat Jaume in Spain delivered a valuable presentation on innovative concepts in photovoltaic conversion and light emission. This aligns with some of the initiatives our teams are pursuing in the REFRESH project. I am pleased that VSB-TUO had 21 representatives at the conference, the highest number from any domestic university. The event serves as an excellent platform for knowledge sharing, and emerging researchers, including students, can gain valuable insights and inspiration for their own work,” stated Zboril.
The conference attracted over 200 participants this year, featuring 81 lectures and 108 posters presented during the poster session. Notably, the invited lecture titled “Towards Atom Precise Synthesis and Engineering with Electron Microscopes” was delivered by Mark Rümmeli from the CEET Institute of Environmental Technology during the session on Advanced Methods for Preparation and Characterisation of Nanosystems. The program was divided into five lecture sessions and included a workshop on the NanoEnviCz large research infrastructure, along with a Czech-Taiwanese Symposium held for the first time.
The International Nanocon Conference is organized by TANGER and the Czech Society for New Materials and Technologies. It is the first conference in the Czech Republic dedicated to nanomaterials, showcasing research, applications, and their potential environmental impact. Since its inception in 2009, the conference has featured esteemed speakers, including Nobel Prize-winning chemist Louis E. Brus from Columbia University and Michael Grätzel from EPFL in Lausanne.
