I am very pleased to report that our young friend from the Baku State University, Mr. Elvin Malikov has won a highly competitive mobility grant of the Science Development Foundation under the President of Azerbaijan. This will enable Elvin to spend some time with us at Szeged again and continue with his experiments in nanotechnology. It is worth noting that this success is the direct consequence of our former collaboration with the Baku State University and the University of Oulu, Finland, in the framework of the FP7 INCO project "NAPEP". It is also worth noting that Elvin's application was the only successful one from the whole Baku State University and also, the only one from Azerbaijan in the field of chemical sciences. Congratulations Elvin, we look forward to working with you again!
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This is just a quick entry to mark the end of August and the beginning of the Fall semester next Monday. Although August was really busy for me from a purely personal point of view, science has largely been on holiday. Nevertheless, we still managed to get one more paper ("Mechanochemically assisted synthesis of pristine Ca(II)Sn(IV)-layered double hydroxides and their amino acid intercalated nano composites") accepted in the Journal of Materials Science this month, thanks to the keen determination of the lead author, Dr. István Pálinkó.
My plans for this semester besides teaching include: - SIWAN 6, - annual meeting of the VOCSENSOR project, - completion of the SusFoFlex project, - carrying on with the research plan of the Lendület group, and - finishing and submitting really _lots_ of manuscripts. I'll keep you all informed here. Until then, I wish all readers a happy, stress-free and successful Fall semester! 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.
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):
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. Good news on Pentecost weekend :) Our paper "Low temperature conversion of titanate nanotubes into nitrogen-doped TiO2 nano particles" was accepted for publication in CrystEngComm yesterday. I believe that this is a really useful paper for anyone interested in doping TiO2 nano particles with nitrogen. We even publish an approximate phase map to facilitate the rational design of doping experiments. It is particularly remarkable that the experimental work that serves as a basis for this paper was done by Mr. Balázs Buchholcz in his final B.Sc. year. Congratulations to all involved, that's the way to go guys! 
It is a pleasure to report that Dr. Erzsébet-Sára Bogya, the post-doctoral researcher of our group has managed to secure some additional funding as Principal Investigator of a Domus Junior fellowship. The topic is to study the adsorption of albumin on hydroxyapatite-carbon nanotube-chitosan composites, the grantee is Ms. Melinda Czikó from the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj Napoca, Romania. This research will be financed for 8 weeks by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the Domus Junior program. Congratulations to Melinda and to Betty, keep up the good work!
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AuthorÁkos Kukovecz is associate professor of chemistry and Head of the MTA-SZTE Lendület Porous Nanocomposites Research Group. He works at Szeged, Hungary. Archives
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