An international workshop on materials science took place in Samara University

For the first time an international workshop on “Application of topological methods in the field of materials science” took place in Samara University at the premises of the Inter-University Research Centre for Theoretical Materials Science (IURCTMS).
 

The workshop was intended to provide an overview of the latest scientific achievements in the field of materials science related to the topological approach and to prepare participants for the International Scientific School “Combined topological and DFT methods for prediction of new materials-2”", which started  on July 4 in the premises of IURCTMS.
 

The first workshop day demonstrated how far the topological approach has spread in the world-wide science.
 

Professor Jean-Guillaume Eon from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) started the lecture meeting with a report on the topological characteristics in crystalline structures. Dr. Peter Boyd of the Polyctechnical Federal School of Lausanne (Switzerland) spoke about the methods of nanoporous materials design. Dr. Matthew Addikot of Leipzig University (Germany) presented and showed the numerical structures forecasting by DFT methods for the entire Mendeleev’s periodic table.
 

The afternoon session reports were more practically oriented. They were presented by the following speakers: Dr. Felipe Gandara (Institute of Materials Science of Madrid, Spain), Dr. Yang Lu (Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, China), Dr. Georgios Costakis (University of Sussex, UK), Dr. Ruggero Gabrielli (Nullo Baldini Industrial and Technical Institute in Ravenna, Italy), David Bednarski (University of Hamburg, Germany).
 

The IURCTMS employees from the Crystal Chemistry and Design Laboratory and the Laboratory of Mathematical Modelling of Materials, as well as some of the guests made their reports on the second workshop day. Particularly, Gulchan Kumar of the University of Delhi (India) spoke about coordination-flexible frames.
 

"This is our first experience to arrange a scientific workshop before the school. We conducted over a dozen scientific schools, but they were mostly training courses. Now we already make a scientific mini-conference, because in our opinion it is time to begins a discussion itself”, - underlined Professor Vladislav Blatov, Director of IURCTMS.
 

In the past decade topological methods began to flourish and be used in many laboratories around the world. Exploratory work of Samara School of Materials Science plays the important role herein. “It is important that new techniques similar to ours are also developed as well as the alternative ones. It is interesting both to the Centre staff and participants of our school on TOPOS program learning. Nowadays we have a unique opportunity to learn what is going on in the scientific world apart from the Samara school. The workshop has shown that new methods are developed, they are interesting and we will be able to cooperate with new people and improve this area”, - assured Vladislav Blatov.
 

“I am happy that we were able today to join so many people from around the world who are interested in science who have never met before. It's nice to see an acquaintance of scientists who have already quoted one another in the articles, and now may talk in real life and discuss the scientific issues on which they are working”, - said Professor Davido Proserpio, Scientific Adviser of IURCTMS, sharing his impressions about the workshop.