- Personnel: we have one predoc and two full-time lab assistants on the group paylist. Our postdoc, Dr. Erzsébet-Sára Bogya finances herself from an individual MTA postdoctoral grant. Two more colleagues and three PhD students are employed by the University of Szeged but work continuously with us. 20 dissertations were supervised by group members and defended successfully in this second year (15 B.Sc. thesis', 3 M.Sc. project works, 1 M.Sc. thesis, 1 Ph.D. thesis).
- Infrastructure: 53.9% of this year's financing was spent on infrastructure development. Major purchases: microbalance, spectrofluorimeter, fuel cell tester, IT infrastructure development, furniture.
- Published results: 16 papers were published (or accepted for publication until June 30, 2014) in SCI journals for a total impact factor of 59.6 in the second project year. In addition, 8 more publications appeared in periodicals without an impact factor. Group members have participated at several conferences in Hungary and abroad. They presented 30 oral contributions and 8 posters. The publication targets defined in the original Lendület proposal for the 2nd project year were met.
- Dissemination: the group was in the news 5 times and we have given 5 introductory talks to non-specialists in the first project year. The group homepage and our Facebook page are active since October 2012. 89 people like our Facebook page where the entry with the highest visibility has been seen by over 300 people. Google Analytics tells me that our homepage was visited by 1868 people in the second project year. The number of foreign visitors has grown by 9% from the first to the second project year.
- Additional financing: approx. 63% of the total external financing expected by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has been secured by members of our group until now. The second project year has seen the launch of the M-ERA.Net project "VOCSENSOR" (OTKA NN 110676 in Hungary, PI: Akos Kukovecz) which alone has opened over 17 Million HUF support to our group for the 2014-2017 period.
- Scientific highlights: the project runs on schedule so far, the planned milestones have all been reached. One out of the six hypotheses' that were originally targeted as the research objectives of the Lendület group has been verified. Our four most important results in the second year were: (i) participation in the development of a gastight polyurethane nano composite material, (ii) a phase map for the nitrogen doping of trititanate nanostructures, (iii) identification of the differing evaporation profiles of water on different carbon nanotubes and (iv) first-ever fluctuation enhanced sensing experiments on an increasingly popular chalcogenide.
The second year of the Lendület project that finances our group ended on 30 June, 2014 and I've submitted the scientific progress report about it yesterday. Let us now review the highlights of this second year!
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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):
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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