SIWAN 2012 is over. I was not able to update this blog daily because I was too tired in the evenings to write here, but this is of course an indication of a busy and successful conference :-) Important announcements first:

1. Hundreds of SIWAN 2012 photos are available for you to download from the facebook page of the event. Please find them here: http://www.facebook.com/Siwan2012
2. Do not forget that the proceedings of SIWAN 2012 will be published after peer review free of charge in the open access journal Nanopages. The deadline for submission if January 2013.

Thursday (25th October) was a busy day. We had two plenary lectures, one more keynote and several regular talks as well as the poster session of the conference. Discussions sprung naturally after the talks and both sessions were visited by enough participants. Three posters were selected for poster awards that were presented at the closing ceremony.

The day winded down nicely with the evening wine-tasting social event which was expertly organized by Balázs Réffy.

Day 3 - Friday, 26th October, 2012. 
Talks in the morning, excursion to Ópusztaszer in the afternoon, farewell dinner in the evening. No major problems encountered and some nice Autumn photos taken. The weather was kind to us, no doubt about that.

Day 4 - Saturday, 27th October, 2012. 
I was a bit worried that the conference would transform into a ghost town for the fourth day. Some participants had to leave before the closing ceremony and for a while I was unsure even about the availability of sessions chairs. Fortunately, the issue of chairing was solved by the help of my friends Vidya Batra and Christian Kramberger – thank both of you again! :)
As it turned out my worries were not justified. Both sessions were visited by a fair amount of colleagues who could thus enjoy some excellent talks given by e.g. Dimitry Bavykin and József Fortágh.

The room was filled with participants even at the closing ceremony on Saturday afternoon. The final numbers as given by Prof. Klára Hernádi, the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Informatics of the University of Szeged are: 183 registered participants from 34 countries, 64 talks actually given, 106 posters presented. 

You are certainly aware of the financial/administrative work performed by Erna Sári and Balázs Réffy of Akadémiai Kiadó, and some of you may also recognize Zoltán Kónya and myself as key persons in SIWAN 2012. However, it is also important to acknowledge the support provided by our young colleagues and students in numerous technical issues. Their names in alphabetical order are: Dániel Berkesi, Valéria Bugris, Dorina Dobó, Zoltán Győri, Henrik Haspel, Gábor Kozma, Dániel Madarász, László Nagy, Zita Papp, Róbert Puskás, Péter Pusztai, Andrea Rónavári, Tímea Simon, Mária Szabó.

All in all, I am quite satisfied with the outcome of SIWAN 2012. Several colleagues congratulated us in person, there were no major problems and the quality of science was fine. I'd like to think that every participant could find interesting topics and establish new contacts here. Moreover, I also hope that they enjoyed their stay at Szeged and will be happy to come back somewhen in the future. Right now we are pretty enthusiastic about SIWAN 2014....see you there!

It is here finally!
SIWAN 2012 has been successfully started today.
Hotel Forrás has done a good job so far. The entrance is nicely decorated, multimedia devices are working as they should, and the coffee break and welcome reception got enough attention from the staff. So far, so good.

I was a bit tense at the beginning because it was difficult to estimate the actual number of participants, but the large lecture hall filled up pretty nicely for the opening ceremony.

SIWAN 2012 was opened by Prof. Gábor Szabó, rector of the University of Szeged, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and most importantly :) - a physicist. He welcomed the participants on behalf of the University and the city of Szeged and emphasized the importance of international events like SIWAN in confirming the position of our university as a leading research university in Hungary.

Talks were running in parallel in two sessions. Discussion followed spontaneously after each lecture. The chairpersons managed the time well. One talk was missing from this first day - we don't have any news about Dr. Mlinar yet. As soon as he turns up, we will reschedule his talk of course. 

I had the honor of opening the welcome reception, therefore, mine was the most anticipated talk of the day – because as soon as I stop talking, the party would start..... :-)  I tried to make it short, hope that it was OK:

One of the nicest things about SIWAN is that it makes it possible for us to meet old friends and make new connections. I certainly hope to enjoy both of these activity types in the forthcoming days a lot!

By the way, photos from the conference will be uploaded daily to our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Siwan2012?fref=ts
Day 1 is already available, make sure to check for updates every day please!

Our very own conference, the 5th Szeged International Conference on Advances in Nanoscience (SIWAN 2012) will be next week from Wednesday 'til Saturday. The basic info is in the University news and the conference homepage.

I'll keep the blog updated with SIWAN2012 news throughout next week of course. However, right now let me recite the history of the SIWAN series for you!

Back in Spring 2003 I was freshly home after doing almost 2 years of postdoc research on carbon nanotubes in the lab of Hans Kuzmany at the University of Vienna, Austria. Zoltán Kónya arrived home after spending a year with Gabor A. Somorjai at Berkeley, USA and our boss, the late Imre Kiricsi was highly motivated to do top nanotechnology research with us. A small workshop seemed like a good idea to put the group more firmly onto the European nanotechnology map. Funds were raised, a simple logo was designed, the workshop title and the acronym were coined and invitations were sent to some excellent European researchers who were also our friends from concluded and running EC FP projects. I was very pleasantly surprised when so many of them accepted – thank you again!

SIWAN 2003 was a success because it managed to get top international researchers and motivated Szeged students together. It was free for all participants because we covered all costs. The scientific program consisted of 15 talks and 16 posters.

SIWAN 2004 was a direct successor built on the same model. The main difference was that we rounded up some Hungarian state funding from a "Mecenatúra" grant and therefore, we were able to allow more participants to attend the workshop. 25 talks and 16 posters were presented and the event was generally considered to be a success.

In 2005 and 2006 we were unsure about the long-term positioning of SIWAN. More and more Hungarian groups joined international projects, traditional conferences (e.g. those that were originally focused on colloidal systems) have shifted their attention towards nano science etc. and therefore, the need for yet another event was not so pushing anymore. Moreover, our proposals requesting funding specifically for SIWAN were rejected and therefore, these years have passed without a workshop.

The third SIWAN was organized in 2007 as a dedicated dissemination event of our EC FP6 project "SANES". With 11 talks, no posters and a length of a single day this event was more like a workshop and less like a conference. Frankly, SIWAN 2007 was functional and the level of science was high, but the event itself was not much to talk about later.

SIWAN as a conference was revived in 2008 with the very important help of Prof. Katalin Kamarás who was working at MTA SZFKI at that time. She secured some significant co-financing for the meeting that allowed us to have 20 talks and 19 posters again. Even more important was the fact that because of the increased attention of the Hungarian colleagues, SIWAN 2008 looked and felt like a real conference instead of a project workshop. The feedback from the participants was all positive and thus we regained our enthusiasm for SIWAN. It was during the poster session discussion of SIWAN 2008 that the idea of transforming the series into a regular, biannual conference with open international attendance and a registration fee first popped up.

Although we did make some preparations in 2009 for the next meeting, the shocking illness and passing of Imre Kiricsi in 2010 ruled out the possibility of SIWAN 2010 completely. Those were sad and difficult times indeed.

It is dubious if we would have the present SIWAN if it was not for Balázs Réffy and Erna Sári of Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary. They proposed transforming the workshop into a conference in 2010 and were willing to assist us in all related technical issues from building a homepage to handling payments and contracting services. Their offer was accepted in 2011 after much pondering about the justification of transforming a free event into a paid conference. Looking back now, it was a good decision because it allowed us to concentrate on the scientific part, which appears to have made a huge difference. At SIWAN 2012 we will have 7 keynote lectures, 59 contributed talks and over 100 posters from over 30 countries. More than 150 participants are registered and the total number of attendees when taking interested Szeged students into account will likely be over 200. 
Only three more days to go until the biggest SIWAN event so far, let us all hope that it will be a successful one!

The big news this week was the successful installation of the new HEL reactor system at our host department. The system consists of a glass and a metal reactor and allows experiments to be run up to 350 bar routinely. In situ turbidimetry and calorimetry monitoring are both installed.
The system holds multiple relevance for our group:

• hydrothermal/solvothermal formation reactions of one dimensional nanomaterials under precise control are possible,
• marker nanoparticle synthesis is possible,
• heterogeneous catalytic test reactions using porous nanocomposites developed by our group are possible.

The system was purchased from our HU-SRB IPA project "MATCROSS". We've had our eyes on such a setup since long, I am really looking forward to using it.