Outreach

A variety of measures were undertaken to communicate and disseminate the topics of PlaMatSu. Apart from measures such as a creation of a brand logo, webpage, social media presence, press releases, and participation at conferences, PlaMatSu published a special issue on bio-inspired materials in Advanced Materials, one of the leading scientific journals for materials research. Moreover, 13 original research papers and reviews with PlaMatSu participations were published in Nature, Advanced Materials and other journals with many more in development. To disseminate and promote their work, ESRs have delivered oral presentations and presented posters at several international scientific conferences, such as the Swiss NanoCovention at ETH Zürich, Switzerland in July 2019, Euromat 2019 (European Congress and Exhibition on Advanced Materials and Processes) in Stockholm, Sweden in September 2019, the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Orlando, USA in March 2019, and the XVIII Brazil Materials Research Society Meeting 2019 at Balneário Camboriú, Brazil in September 2019.

PlaMatSu’s ESRs reached out to the general public by organising the exhibition “Our Future is Nature Inspired” at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, which ran from September to November 2020. The exhibition was organised and produced by the ESRs and the Learning and Public Outreach Team of the Botanic Garden despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. As well as coordinating with each other and the various teams at Cambridge, the ESRs also collaborated with a visual studio company to produce a video on nature-inspired design, which was shown as part of the exhibition and is available online on PlaMatSu´s webpage and on YouTube.  As part of the PlaMatSu exhibition, the ESRs based in Cambridge were interviewed on camera for the BBC Look East TV news programme in September 2020. The exhibition received further press and radio coverage, e.g. by the BBC, and was promoted on social media, e.g. with a Facebook Live Event that was streamed from the exhibition.

PlaMatSu ESR Benjamin Droguet showcases his research on structural colours at the 4th Biomim Expo in Paris, which Benjamin attended alongside fellow ESR Gea van de Kerkhof, October 2019.

PlaMatSu ESR Benjamin Droguet speaks about polluting colourants and microplastics in the Falling Walls Lab competition during the European Research and Innovation Days in Brussels on 26 September 2019.

Full video here:

PlaMatSu ESR Livia Bast presents her work on silk crosslinkers for bioinspired materials at the Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa em Materials meeting in Brazil on 24 September 2019.

PlaMatSu ESRs Johannes Bergmann, Aristotelis Kamtsikakis and Venkata Amarnadh Surapaneni pictured at EUROMAT 2019 with PlaMatSu PIs Prof. Thomas Speck and Dr Marc Thielen, where they presented during the session "Bio-Inspired Materials: Surfaces and Interfaces", September 2019.

PlaMatSu ESR Konstantinos Roumpos presents his project and demonstrates dewetting experiments to Masters students during tutorials for the Masters course "Physical Processes of Self-Assembly and Pattern Formation" at the University of Freiburg, July 2019.

PlaMatSu ESR Johannes Bergmann speaks about 3D printing at Science Slam 2019 in Fribourg on 16 May 2019.

Full video here:

PlaMatSu ESR Livia Bast presents our new silk benzophenones linkers in a talk within the session Polymer Bioconjugates for a Changing World at ACS in Orlando, April 2019.

PlaMatSu ESRs Gea van de Kerkhof and Benjamin Droguet present their research at the Science Museum in London as part of the event "Can a Sustainable Future Be Colourful?", February 2019.

PlaMatSu ESR Aristotelis Kamtsikakis presents the network's research and interacts with the public at the Adolphe Merkle Institute as part of Fribourg's annual Museum Night, May 2018.

PlaMatSu PI Beverley Glover conducts a private tour of the Cambridge Botanic Garden for Vignolini research group members, attended by ESRs Benjamin Droguet and Gea van de Kerkhof, 21 May 2018.

PlaMatSu ESR Johannes Bergmann speaks about Soft Matter Physics at Science Slam 2018 in Fribourg on 19 April 2018.

 

PlaMatSu ESR Gea van de Kerkhof presents a poster at the Living Light 2018 conference, where fellow ESR Benjamin Droguet was responsible for live tweeting during the talks, April 2018.

PlaMatSu ESR Livia Bast supervises chemistry experiments as part of the "KidsUni" initiative for school children during an open-door day at the Adolphe Merkle Institute in Fribourg, March 2018.

PlaMatSu ESR Benjamin Droguet takes part in the Cambridge Science Festival, where he and fellow ESR Gea van de Kerkhof explained to a young public the wide concept and implications of structural colours in nature, with demonstrations on soap bubbles, bees and butterflies, March 2018.