As part of our mission to promote interdisciplinarity and collaboration, the BIST research centres are organizing PhD students’ visits, one to each centre.
As part of our mission to promote interdisciplinarity and collaboration, the BIST research centres are organizing PhD students’ visits, one to each centre.The goal of these visits is to allow the BIST PhD fellows and first year PhD students to discover the BIST community through interacting with one another, sharing their research, and learning that research at other centres can be surprisingly relevant to their own work. These visits also provide an opportunity for participants to meet regularly and build connections with one another.
On April 19th, the second BIST PhD visit took place at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Tarragona. We began the day with a presentation by Dr. Lorna Piazzi, HR Talent Acquisition Officer at ICIQ, about life at ICIQ. We then heard from our BIST PhD fellow Nataliia Vereshchuk about her research. Next was a presentation by Irene Puntí, ICIQ Business Development Manager. She talked about the transfer of scientific research to the market and how important it is to maximize the impact of science on society.
We then learned about the main research areas that ICIQ focuses on through presentations by PhD students about the following four topics: 1) Catalysis, 2) Artificial photosynthesis, 3) CO2 recycling, and 4) Computational chemistry. The presentations were exceptionally well communicated with lots of illustrations and examples.
Finally, we had the chance to visit some labs and learn about how the ICIQ core facilities work, what services they provide, and how PhD students can interact with them. During this time, we met the ICIQ in-house glass blower, Xavier Asensio, who designs, fabricates, and repairs glassware for ICIQ experiments.
The day ended with a Paella lunch and a time to network and spend time together.
This visit gave BIST PhD fellows, who are pioneers of the BIST PhD fellowship program, the opportunity to showcase their work and connect with other BIST PhD fellows as well as first year PhD students in the BIST community.
The next visit will be at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). We look forward to continuing our journey of discovering the BIST community then.
Please follow us on twitter (@_BIST) and Facebook (@BISTBarcelona) to see real-time information about these visits and other BIST activities.
