Three students related to our group have given excellent presentations this week at the "Kémiai Előadói Napok" (Chemistry Lecture Days) organized by the University of Szeged. Congratulations to Dorina Dobó, Balázs Buchholcz and Viktor Havasi!

The public visibility of our group was increased in October by two means: (i) I have given an introductory talk about 1D nanostructures in the Free University series of the University of Szeged, and (ii) the graphene nanoribbon ACS Nano paper was highlighted in the news of Rice University, the University of Szeged, and most recently, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

So far so good, now let us all get back to work and do some more nice science!

Last week we attended the kick-off meeting of our new M-ERA.NET project "VOCSENSOR" in Taiwan. The meeting was expertly organized by the coordinator Prof. Wei-Fang Su and her team. We were honored to meet Prof. Jia-Yush Yen, Dean of the College of Engineering of NTU and Prof. Chao-Sung Lin, Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. We are thankful for the assistance provided by the students and staff of the Department as well as by the kind help of Dr. Ming-Chung Wu, our friend from the Chang Gung University.

The VOCSENSOR project runs between 2013-2016. The consortium consists of the Spanish company Ingenieros Asesores, S.A, the Finnish company Nanordic Oy, the National Taiwan University and the University of Szeged. Funding is provided by the representative national agencies. In Hungary, funding is done through the OTKA NN 110676 project headed by Ákos Kukovecz. The goal of VOCSENSOR is to develop a cheap and compact sensor for the detection of volatile organic compounds (e.g. aromatics and aldehydes) in a work environment. The scientific objectives fit our Lendület targets well, so I have high hopes for a fruitful collaboration.

I am in Taiwan this week at the kick-off meeting of our M-ERA.NET project VOCSENSOR. A more detailed report will follow next week. Right now I'm just here to brag about tonight a bit :) 

Our host, Professor Wei-Fang Su managed to get us invited to the Official State Reception held in celebration of the 102th National Day of the Republic of China. We were really honored and privileged to attend this reception, which was given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. David Y. L. Lin and Mrs. Lin. The other guests were high-ranking politicians, cultural and business leaders - all in all, a very interesting mixed crowd. I was especially pleased to meet Mr. Levente Székely, the official representative of Hungary in Taiwan, and discuss a bit about the possibilities of increasing the scientific collaboration between the Republic of China and Hungary.

Good news for early October: our paper titled "Functionalized Low Defect Graphene Nanoribbons and Polyurethane Composite Film for Improved Gas Barrier and Mechanical Performances" was accepted for publication in ACS Nano yesterday. This work was coordinated by the fine folks at Rice University, our contribution was the measurement and analysis of the gas permeability curves. It should be mentioned here that the measurements were made by Tímea Simon, our favorite lab assistant :) Such high impact, high visibility publications are very much needed for the success of the Lendület group, so I'm quite happy about this one.

September might have appeared a bit silent here on the blog, but October is surely gaining momentum fast! Our paper "Water Types and their Relaxation Behavior in Partially Rehydrated CaFe-Mixed Binary Oxide Obtained from CaFe-Layered Double Hydroxide in the 155 K – 298 K Temperature Range" was accepted for publication in Langmuir yesterday! This paper presents a nice practical application of dielectric spectroscopy: monitoring the behavior of water in a layered double hydroxide derivative material. The first author is Ms. Valéria Bugris, the expert corresponding authors is Dr. István Pálinkó. Congratulations to all who were involved in this nice work!

October starts with some splendid news for our group: we have a new postdoc! Ms. Erzsébet-Sára Bogya has won the prestigious postdoctoral award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to join us for the next two years. She will be responsible for the liquid/solid interface phenomenon investigations. I have high hopes that her presence will boost our productivity in this field. Work has already started, I'll keep you updated about the results. Until then: cheers and welcome, Betty! :)