YtY – Space laboratories: space experiments and missions to find our origin.

Posted on 17/04/201823/04/2018 by YM Webmaster

Students choose university courses mostly upon what they like, but rarely they know what truly means working in a particular area. This is true both for research and industry. There are informative initiatives, but we realised that students want to know about the decision progress older collegues have taken, maybe only a couple of year before them. Then, we organize “Young to Young” (Y2Y) meetings in order to let young speakers tell young students why they decided to start a PhD or to be enrolled by a company or which was their thesis project, presenting their whole experience.

The first Y2Y meeting was presented by Dr. Riccardo Giovanni Urso, graduated at the University of Catania in Science Materials and Nanotechnology. He focused on the fact that his research project concerned the formation of materials in space that led to the origin of life, an interdisciplinary path that gave him the right enthusiasm. He described his work, his results and how he learned from all people he came in contact. At the end, there was time dedicated to questions by students.

Undergraduate students and early master’s students were the target of this meeting. We were able to attract an audience of about 30 people.

We asked all participants to fill a survey. Feedbacks are clear: they appreciated this initiative and all of them will participate next meetings. They also appreciated the fact that a young person was spoke to them. Finally, we need to improve the advertising to reach more students and attract them.

Student Meeting: “Famelab Catania 2018”

Posted on 12/04/2018 by YM Webmaster

Famelab is a science communication competition with the aim of entertain by talking science. Since its launch in 2005 in Cheltenham (UK) Famelab has become the world’s biggest communication contest for scientists, and today the event includes more than thirty countries. This challenge is open to young researchers, university students and anyone involved in science who loves talking about a scientific topic in an effective way. In fact, the competitors have only three minutes to tell the object of their research activity or a fascinating scientific topic to a heterogeneous public (researchers, university and high-school students, families…), only with the help of their communication skills and small objects of everyday life. In each local contest, the “famelabers” are judged by a selected jury (scientists, communicators, journalists…). The jury choose the two winners who will participate to the “masterclass”, a three-days training event with professional science communicator, and then to the national and, eventually, international competition.

Since 2017 Catania is one of the italian selection sites for Famelab, and for the second year EPS Young Minds team has been directly involved in the organization of the event as major sponsor, providing also technical support services. In particular, based on the big success of the 2017 edition in terms of participants and feedbacks from the public, in 2018 the YM section proposed a new three-days format for the local event: two semi-finals and the final contest. In each day, the YM section and invited a high-profile scientist to be part of the jury, and to do a seminar about frontier research topics at the end of contest. The three invited high-level scientists were:

Barbara Mazzolai, Director of the Center for Micro-BioRobotics of the IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), who talked about bioinspired robotics and the future of robotics.
Luigi Cattivelli, Director of the Genomics Research Center of the Agrigultural Research Council, who presented his research activity on genetics and molecular biology of cereals.
Eugenio Coccia, Rector of the Gran Sasso Science Institute and one of the authors of the discovery gravitational waves and of the first observation of black holes, who talked about the born of a new astronomy with gravitational waves.

At the beginning and at the end of the three presentations, the speakers did not lose the opportunity to acknowledge the YM section and in general the YM philosophy. A great participation of scientists and students was appreciated not only during the contest but also during the presentations, and there were also strong interactions with the three speakers, moderated and catalysed by the YM members.

Scientific research around us: “Printed Nano-particles Based Bio Sensors”

Posted on 12/04/201823/04/2018 by YM Webmaster

Sensors are nowadays in everything, always smaller, efficient and interconnected. In our smartphones are irreplaceable tools for the interaction with the touchscreen and for the gesture (i.e. gyroscope, accelerometer etc) as well as for the health monitoring and the interaction with the environment (i.e. hearth rate monitoring, compass, barometer, GPS etc). In the next future, their number will increase exponentially to guarantee new service and security application. Indeed, sensors permit us to understand, monitoring and interact with the environment around us. In these last years, there was an exponential growth of the research about the bio sensoristic with innovative sensing platform based on nanostructures thanks to their innovative properties and the very high surface to volume ratio with respect to bulk materials. In this seminar, the importance of very cheap and interconnected sensors was enfatized also for the smart agricolture in poor country to fight against the scarsely food production. Prof. Shacham is one of the most global experts in this field and proposed an innovative technique to realize very cheap printed sensors based on metal nanoparticles by using special ink in common optimized printers. In this way, the estimate cost amount in large industrial production of these sensors is so cheap to be competitive in third world country agricultures showing new opportunity against the world hunger. The sensors showed are mostly Enzymatic and was exploited in the medical field (i.e. glucose sensing) as well as in environmental monitoring for smart agriculture (i.e. monitoring of plant conditions by the protein expression).
Prof. Shacham has treated with meticulous clarity different topic from screen printing of nanoparticles to biophysics and the functionalization of different material for sensors with a very intressing vision of the next future of the sensors. Finally, Prof. Shacham did not lose the opportunity to acknowledge our YM Section and the general YM philosophy, inviting interessed students and researchers to think to the opportunity to apply for an experience in his laboratories. The primary target of this seminars was mostly graduated and Ph.D. students with the appreciated participation of the undergraduate student, researchers and department professors and we obtain an odience of about 40 people.

In order to have the possibility to host a high-profile scientist, we organize this seminar join in the collaboration of the University of Catania and the University of Palermo about their project of the
inter university Ph.D. in Nanomaterial Science.

After the end of the scientific discussions, further informal scientific interactions were catalyzed by a convivial environment and the students had also the opportunity to interact directly with Prof. Shacham and discover different interessing suggestion about the next future of the sensoristic field by one of the
most recognized scientific expert.

When arts meet science

Posted on 15/12/201622/01/2017 by YM Webmaster

When Arts meet Science” was an outreach event realized in synergy with University of Catania and National Council of Research (CNR) in July 2016. It consisted mainly in an “Image Competition” and, as a consequence, an “Image Exhibition” realized firstly in the framework of the 6th International Conference on NANOstructures and nanomaterials SElf-Assembly (NanoSEA 2016; http://www.nanosea2016.imm.cnr.it/ ) held in Giardini Naxos (3-8 July 2016). All the conference attendees were invited to submit a computer-assisted or traditional scientific image designed to remind artistic subjects. The best selected 20 images were decorated with poems, poetry and famous sentences coming from the literary world by a proper committee, in order to pursue the aim to mix Science and Arts. In addition, they were displayed in the Exhibit Hall of the conference venue (ATAHOTEL NAXOS BEACH Conference Center) and were also published in the abstracts book. The printing costs were financed by EPS Young Mind grants of the Catania Section. The competition winner was awarded of a prize consisting in a free of charge double as a single room in the conference venue, while the second place winner image was used as cover for the abstracts book. This event gave a great visibility to the EPS Young Mind Catania Section group among all the conference attendees (about 150, coming from all countries of Europe). Some pictures of the exhibition hall are reported below.
The exhibition was then moved inside the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania, whose opening was held on the 28th of July 2016 and was followed by a happy hour offered by EPS Young Mind Catania section. All the Physics students and the permanent staff of Professors and Researchers were invited to participate to the event. Although most of the people were already on holiday, the event was attended by more than 50 people, especially students, permitting us to gain their attention and involve them for future activities. In any case, the exhibition was made permanent, thanks to the Department Director consensus, therefore all the students and people passing by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania will always have the possibility of admiring it.
The costs of the events were supported in part by EPS Young Mind and in part by University of Catania. In particular, the grant (500 euro) financed by EPS Young Mind for this activities was spent to cover the printing cost (200 euro), the award (200 euro), and the happy hour joined to the Permanent Exhibition Opening (100 euro).