The end of July has brought lots of joy and happiness into my life. A minor yet welcome addition to this flow of positive experiences was the publication of the paper "Toxic metal immobilization in contaminated sediment using bentonite- and kaolinite-supported nano zero-valent iron" in Journal of Nanoparticle Research 16 (2014) 2548. This is yet another example of the fruitful collaboration between our friends in Novi Sad, Serbia and our own group. This particular paper was expertly managed by Dr. Dragana Tomasevic. The paper is about the usage of zero valent iron nano particles in toxic metal immobilization. It reports a considerable amount of new data and is certainly worth the time spent reading it for anyone interested in real-world nanotechnology and/or environmental problems and their solutions.

It looks like July is book chapter month :) I'm pleased to report another book chapter co-authored by our group on nanomaterial based sensors. The chapter is "Carbon Paste Electrodes Bulk-Modified with Carbon Nanotubes and Chemically Oxidized Carbon Nanotubes for the Determination of Hydrogen Peroxide" and it was published very recently in Sensing in Electroanalysis, Vol. 8. (K. Kalcher, R. Metelka, I. Svancara, K. Vytras, Eds), 2014, pp. 195-2011, print ISBN  978-80-7395-782-7. This chapter was expertly managed by our friend and colleague Dr. Valéria Guzsvány from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia.

Let us close this week with some good news! Our book chapter "Gas sensing and thermal transport through carbon-nanotube-based nano devices" was published on 9th July, 2014 in the Springer book "Design and applications of nanomaterials for sensors" which is part of the series "Challenges and Advances in Computational Chemistry and Physics". Our chapter is in Volume 16, 2014, pp 99-136, print ISBN 978-94-017-8847-2. This chapter was written in a nice international cooperation and the effort was lead by Dr. Yann Pouillon.

Let me finish today's blogging session with some modest bragging :) Today I received the Scientific Excellence Prize (Chemistry) of the Faculty of Science and Informatics of the University of Szeged! This prize is awarded annually to maximum one researcher from each natural science discipline of the faculty. I am honored by this prize and consider it to be a recognition of the joint effort made by all colleagues with whom I've collaborated through all these years. Moreover, the prize also recognizes the quality of the work done recently in our Lendület research group. So thank you, everyone - now let us get back to work! :)

Our third project year took a flying start! I was informed a few days ago that the OTKA committee has decided on 2nd July 2014 to fund our proposal OTKA K 112531 "Interactions between ferroelectric core-shell nanospheres and autocatalytic front reactions - Towards developing combined visual/RFID sensor labels utilizing pH-change based responses". This project will be realized through the joint effort of the Nonlinear Dynamics and Kinetics research group of the Department of Physical Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Szeged (Ágota Tóth, Dezső Horváth) and our own group where I will be assisted by our young colleagues András Sápi and Henrik Haspel. The funding contract will open on 1st January 2015 and run for 4 years with a total budget of 39.956 million HUF. Thanks to all co-proposers! I look very much forward to working on this project with you guys!

This is just a quick note to mark the passing of the 2nd Lendület project year. I'll publish a detailed report on the main results and scientific output of the group by the end of July. For the moment let's just say that I think we are doing OK. There is always room for improvement of course, but research is continuous, infrastructural developments are done, papers co-authored by group members are published and extra financing from outside the Hungarian Academy of Science has been secured. All in all, I honestly believe that the group is on the right track. A big thank you goes to all who have helped our work in any way, and a big special thank you goes to all readers of this blog for their interest. 

Keep monitoring us guys, we will do interesting science in the forthcoming project year! :)

I should have written this entry a while ago, but hey, I was busy with student works, therefore, I did not have the time to write about student works... :) Anyway, I'm pleased to report that all undergraduate students working under my co-supervision in Spring 2013/2014 have successfully defended their BSc/MSc thesis' or presented nice project works. They certainly deserve their names to be listed here (names are presented in no particular order):

• Katalin Bencsik
• Tamás Varga
• József Monyók
• Csaba Karkus
• Zsanett Molnár
• István Dániel Fülöp
• Ákos Fazekas
• Zoltán Horváth
• Gábor Laudisz
• Máté Magyar

Congratulations to all who concluded their studies with this defense, we wish you all the bests in your profession career! All others are welcome to come back and continue their work at the next level.