Joe delivered a seminar to postgraduate students and academic staff at Keele University as part of their annual Seminar Series. Joe was invited to speak by Dr Chris Hawes, Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at Keele. The seminar was entitled “Sweetness and light: a journey towards diagnostic tools” and described the research which underpins the current work in the Byrne group as well as some recent results.
The Lindau-Nobel Laureate Online Science Days event was hosted online to replace the annual meeting on the island of Lindau in Germany, as a result of the Coronavirus crisis. Those who were scheduled to attend this year’s Interdisciplinary Meeting were invited, as were attendees of previous Lindau meetings. The result was an engaging programme of events over three 12-hour days (in order to accommodate people in various time zones). Topics included diversity in the sciences, climate change, the economic impact of the pandemic, and green chemistry, among many others.
Joe had the chance to engage directly with Prof. Ryoji Noyori about questions of homogeneous organometallic catalysis – a topic he investigated during his postdoc in University of Bern – and solvent choice for green chemistry. This direct communication with Nobel laureates went on all through the event and was a unique opportunity.
On Wednesday, the top-ranked projects from the “Implementing the Lindau Guidelines” category of the Sciathon contest were invited to present their projects on the main stage and look for further support. Joe and Natalia Jiménez (University of Chile) represented Team Elmiger, and won the 3rd place prize. Watch the Sciathon Results presentation here: https://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/38750/2020-osd-sciathon-results-lindau-guidelines/meeting-2020
Hopefully, the scheduled 70th Lindau-Nobel Laureate Meeting will take place in 2021 and there will be a chance to attend in person.
Read the Lindau-Nobel blog entry on the “Implementing the Lindau Guidelines” Category.
A new platform for sharing details of online seminars, and a call to “open the doors of seminar rooms worldwide” was the proposal of Team Elmiger, a group which Joe joined to compete in the inaugural 48-hour Sciathon contest, taking place as part of the Lindau “Online Science Days 2020”.
The team of scientists and economists from around the world wrote a report and made a video over the course of the weekend about the importance of connecting the world to inspiring research talks. In particular, they highlighted the value of harnessing the shift to online events, which has been a consequence of the Coronavirus crisis, to invite researchers from the developing world to attend seminars in leading universities. The team built a prototype website to demonstrate how this could be achieved, and set out a plan about how this could be developed in future to create a more open and connected world. The team was a collaboration between researchers in the developed and developing world, and a clear example of the strength of bringing diverse people together, which is key to the vision of the Lindau-Nobel Foundation.
A panel of international judges awarded Team Elmiger the 3rd Prize in the Category “Implementing the Lindau Guidelines“.
See the video below:
Byrne Research Group 