The 2023 edition of JORNADAS CICECO- Aveiro Institute of Materials brought together more than 300 people at the Vista Alegre Museum in Ílhavo. The event, held on October 12, addressed topics that go beyond the usual boundaries of a scientific meeting, including career development and opportunities, stress management, (inter)national networking, and scientific policies.

The opening session was attended by João Coutinho, Director of CICECO, João Campolargo, Mayor of Ílhavo, Teodorico Pais, Director of the Vista Alegre Group, and Paulo Jorge Ferreira, Rector of the University of Aveiro.

Among the initiatives, the standout was the lectures featuring expert guests in various areas, such as "Artificial Intelligence Tools in Scientific Publishing," presented by Pascal Coupet from Elsevier, "Mental Health in an Academic Environment," facilitated by Brian Cahill from the Learning and Skills Analysis Laboratory at the Leibniz Information Center for Science and Technology TIB Leibniz, and a performance by musician and current doctoral candidate JP Coimbra, who explained and demonstrated how to use the studio as a performance space and a tool for sound composition simultaneously.

The Journeys included a pitch competition for students and poster presentations, resulting in a set of winners. From these activities, there was room for awarding prizes to the participants in different categories.

Highlighting the "CICECO Young Researcher Awards," aimed at rewarding the profile of new researchers, Augusto Pedro, Paula Barbosa, Karol Strutynski, Maxim Ivanov, Flavio Figueira, and Nicola Schaeffer were selected.

In the "Art in Science" category, resulting from the selection of a set of scientific photographs for exhibition during the Journeys, two authors were chosen: Miguel Vieira (jury's choice) and Tânia Carvalho (public's choice). In the "Best PhD Student Pitch" competition, Rute Mota emerged as the winner.

For the "Best Poster" category, the following were selected: poster number 32 from session I by Pedro Conceição, Pedro Salomé, and Tito Trindade, titled "Green Synthesis of Perovskite Quantum Dots for Solar Cells"; poster number 195 by Carolina Martins, Maria Luísa Durão, Anareth Cavuquila, Inês Portugal, Carlos M. Silva, Idalina Gonçalves, and Ana Barros-Timmond, titled "Development of New 3D Printing Filaments Using Tomato Pomace and Multiplayer Plastic Waste as Raw Materials."

The CICECO Journeys were highlighted in various media outlets, emphasizing CICECO as the largest Materials Institute in the country and one of the most prestigious internationally. The news highlighted the classification of the Aveiro Materials Institute, whose latest national research evaluation (2017/18) carried out by the Foundation for Science and Technology, awarded it the distinction of being the Materials Science and Engineering Institute with the highest national rating. Also noteworthy are the requests for industrial property protection submitted to the European Patent Office in 2022, prominently featuring CICECO.

In an interview with Rádio Terranova, João Coutinho, Director of the Aveiro Institute of Materials, emphasized that the search for sustainable solutions for plastics and the batteries of the future are important areas of their work."

https://www.terranova.pt/noticia/sociedade/ambiente-e-energia-do-futuro-na-agenda-do-instituto-de-materiais-de-aveiro 

Para mais informações:

https://www.terranova.pt/noticia/saude/instituto-de-materiais-de-aveiro-realiza-jornadas-na-vista-alegre-ciencia-e-emprego-em

https://www.ua.pt/pt/noticias/4/83778 

And for photos galery here.

The organizing committee of the 2023 JORNADAS was led by João Amaral, Mariana Oliveira, and Vitor Sencadas.