Author: Mar Tristany

Our researcher, Dr. Mariona Coll, has been awarded with the Research Award L’Oréal-Unesco “For Women in Science” 2017. The awards ceremony took place this last Wednesday, 22 November, in Madrid. Mariona will receive 15.000 € that will be invested in her research project which “can contribute to one of the most important challenges of this century: find a new energy system for the production of clean energy”. 

Mariona Coll, and her research project on the development of new materials for the conversion of solar energy, carried out at SUMAN-ICMAB, has been awarded with one of the five Research Awards L’Oréal-Unesco “For Women in Science”. Mariona studied Chemistry at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and did her PhD in Chemistry at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and SUMAN-ICMAB, on the development of superconducting materials. She then was a postdoc in USA (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of Maryland) and in Europe (IFWDresden, University of Hamburg, ICMS-CSIC), before coming back to SUMAN-ICMAB.

At SUMAN-ICMAB, Mariona is currently researching new materials capable of converting the solar light into electrical energy in a more efficient way than the current materials used nowadays in solar cells (mainly crystalline silicon), by combining nanotechnology with low cost chemistry-based methods.

The awards ceremony was built upon the question “How can we make that young girls fall in love with STEM?”, since the “For Women in Science” program has been for 17 years working on enhancing the visibility of women in science, and this year was specially focused in STEM: its goal is to reach the 50 % women in the STEM university studies (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

RESEARCH AWARDS For Women in Science 2017:

The full list of this year’s Research Awards is the following: 

• Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), Mariona Coll.
• Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Eva Mª Fernández.
• Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Maia Garcia Vergniory.
• Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Mª del Prado Martín Moruno.
• Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC, CSIC-Universidad de Valencia), Mariam Tórtola.

In the press:

• El País (Materia): Hay niñas que sí sueñan con ser como Marie Curie
• La Vanguardia: L’Oréal lanza una campaña para impulsar la presencia de mujeres en las carreras de ciencia y tecnología
• Cosmopolitan: Estas científicas pueden cambiar tu vida
• El Mundo: “Las mujeres podemos, queremos y sabemos hacer ciencia”
• Quo: L’ORÉAL ENTREGA LOS PREMIOS FOR WOMEN SCIENCE A CINCO DESTACADAS CIENTÍFICAS ESPAÑOLAS
• El Confidencial: Astrofísica y materiales, especialidades de las premiadas por L’Oréal-UNESCO
• Sinc: Cinco-investigadoras-espanolas-reciben-el-premio-L-Oreal-Unesco2
• Expansión: Así es la campaña para conseguir que las niñas accedan a carreras de Ciencias
• El9NOU: 

Dr. Joffre Gutierrez has recently obtained a mobility grant Jose Castillejo for young researchers from the Spanish Ministerio de educacion, cultura y deporte. Thanks to this grant, Dr. Gutierrez will work for six months with Prof. Xiaolin Wang at the Institute for superconducting and electronic materials at the University of Wollongong (Australia). There, he will perform a study of the vortex pinning of REBa2Cu3O7-x films and tapes at magnetic fields up to 14T and under high hydrostatic pressure (1.5 GPa) with the aim to identify the best microstructure for the working conditions found at the future circular collider at CERN

The COST Action “NANOSCALE COHERENT HYBRID DEVICES FOR SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES” has been recently awarded. The Action includes 45 proponents from 18 countries. The Action will develop networking activities with an open, proactive and inclusive approach, managing a budget of about 0.5M€ for four years. Researchers from every participating country will be able to apply for funds to carry out short scientific missions or participate in other networking activities within the theme of the Action, regardless of the group or institution where they develop their main activity.

Prof. Teresa Puig has been selected  as a Managment Committee (MC) Member and Dr. Anna Palau as a substitute.

MC members will meet on the 18th October in Brussels to kick-off the project. 

COST is the longest-running European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among researchers, engineers and scholars across Europe. The Action is one of the 35 Actions approved by the Committee of Senior Officials on 23 June 2017.

Superconducting technologies are prime candidates to ripen quantum effects into devices and applications. The accumulated knowledge in decades of work in understanding superconductivity allows scientists now to make experiments by design, controlling relevant parameters in devices. A new field is emerging whose final objective is to improve appliances taking advantage of quantum effects, be it for dissipationless transport of current, generation of high magnetic fields, sensors or quantum information. The field will impact crucial areas for societal development, including energy, transport, medicine or computation. Quantum behavior is controlled by using hybrids of superconductors with magnets, insulators, semiconductors or normal metals. Traditionally, the scientific and technical communities working in superconductivity are spread across projects from different calls, whose activities put Europe at the frontier of research. The Action aims to address the pressing need for a common place to share knowledge and infrastructure and develop new cooperative projects.

The first granting period of the Action will start 1st November 2017 until 30 th April 2018.

 more information

An important representation of SUMAN group assisted to the 13^th European Conference on Applied Superconductivity, EUCAS 2017, held in the International Conference Centre of Geneva (CICG), hosted by CERN in collaboration with the University of Geneva and EPFL-SPC, and presented the work of the group.

Dr. Anna Palau give an invited entitled ” European progress toward Nanostructure engineering in coated conductors” at 4MO3 – Coated Conductor: Processing and Properties session.

Dr. Xavier Granados an oral communication entitled “Superconducting Medium Speed Synchronous Electrical Generator for 2MW Class Wind Mills” at 2LO2 – Rotating Machines and other Large Size Applications session.

Dr. Cornelia Pop an oral communication entitled ” Chemical solution deposition growth of low fluorine thick coated conductors of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ and YBa₂Cu₃O₇ nanocomposites with preformed BZO nanoparticles” at 4MO3 – Coated Conductor: Processing and Properties session.

The PhD student Laia Soler an oral communication entitled “Mechanisms of novel transient liquid assisted growth for ultrafast production of YBa₂Cu₃O7-x thin films” at 3MO3 – Cuprate Thin films session.

The PhD student Bernat Mundet an oral communication entitled “The challenging pinning landscape of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ thin films” at 1MO1 – Critical Current and Flux Pinning session.

And the group has also presnted the following posters:

• “ReBCO coated conductors for the future circular hadron collider beam screen” by Dr. Joffre Gutierrez
• “Physical Properties of Nanostructured, Liquid Assisted Grown, Epitaxial YBa₂Cu₃O₇-x Superconducting Films” by the PhD student Juri Banchewski
• “YBa₂Cu₃O₇-x nanocomposite films by CSD-ultrafast Transient Liquid Assisted Growth” by the PhD student Júlia Jareño
• “Thick YBa₂C₃O₇-x layers with ink jet printing single deposition” by the PhD student Bohores Villarejo
• “Preparation of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ – BaMO (M=Zr, Hf) superconductor nanocomposite using colloidal solution with preformed nanoparticles” by the PhD student Ziliang Li
• “Role of Oxygen exchange kinetics in the engineering of carrier concentration of YBa₂Cu₃O₇-δ films” by the PhD student Alex Stangl
• “High growth rate of YBCO films by Transient Liquid Assisted Growth by oxygen partial pressure control” and “Eutectic temperature determination of the BaO-CuO-O system in
  bulk and in films” by the PhD student Silvia Rasi

Other collaborators presented results obtained in collaboration with the group:

• “Dragging hysteresis forces in a linear displacer with Coated Conductor Stacks” poster by Prof. José López
• “Magnetization of rectangular 2G HTS stacks and dragging forces developed inside a multipolar magnetic channel: trapped field, current distribution and forces” poster by Prof. Miquel Carrera

We want to thank to all SUMAN participants for the successful orals and posters! Congratulations, good job!