On tour with the team: impressions from the 2017 Vlieland meeting

Between May 7^th and 9^th more than 170 members of the Zernike Institute National Research Centre visited the beautiful island of Vlieland. During a three-day symposium mainly the junior staff presented the beauty of nanoscience during oral and poster presentations. Besides our own team we were happy to welcome Prof. Caroline Ross (MIT), who presented the keynote lecture entitled “Magnetic Insulators for Spintronic and Magnetooptical Devices”.

The Vlieland conference has a long-standing tradition in the Zernike Institute National Research Centre (NRC), which is running the advanced materials research program of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry and the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute. The meeting in the dunes of Vlieland combines the presentation of the latest results, discussing options for collaborative projects and a big portion of fun.

From Magnon Spintronics to Superglue

This year’s scientific program presented once more the full breadth of the institute: The topics were ranging from e.g. Magnon Spintronics, superstrong bio-adhesives, perovskite solar cells to self-synthesizing materials. In almost 20 oral sessions and on 120 posters the PhD students, Postdocs and Alex de VriesJgave insights in their latest results.

New research lines

Besides the junior staff, also our latest hires Prof. Shirin Faraji (Theoretical and Computational Chemistry), Prof. Wouter Roos (Molecular Biophysics) and Dr. Giuseppe Portale (Polymer Chemistry/Physical Chemistry of Polymers) provided a glimpse in their recently established research lines and their plans for the future.

Keynote by Caroline Ross

Another highlight was the keynote by Prof. Caroline Ross from the department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. In her talk, Prof. Ross spoke about her research magnetic insulators for spintronic and magnetooptical devices, particularly for data storage and logic applications.

No scientific meeting without awards

In good tradition of almost all scientific meetings we closed the event with awarding the best poster, the best flash-presenters and the best dancing professor.

To get an impression of the whole program, just flip through the image gallery at the bottom of the page.