Tag Archives: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

Comments on today’s (September 20, 2023) media briefing for the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) inaugural Global Centers Competition awards

I almost missed the briefing but the folks at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) kindly allowed me to join the meeting despite being 10 minutes late. Before launching into my comments, here’s what we were discussing,

From a September 20, 2023 NSF media briefing (received via email),

U. S. National Science Foundation Media Briefing on the Inaugural Global Centers Awards  

Please join the U.S. National Science Foundation this Wednesday September 20th from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. EST for a discussion and Q&A on the inaugural Global Centers Competition awards. Earlier this week, NSF along with partner funding agencies from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom — announced awards totaling $76.4 million for the inaugural Global Centers Competition. These international, interdisciplinary collaborative research centers will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired research on climate change and clean energy. The centers will also create and promote opportunities for students and early-career researchers to gain education and training in world-class research while enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

NSF will have a panel of experts on hand to discuss and answer questions about these new Global Centers and how they will sync talent across the globe to generate the discoveries and solutions needed to empower resilient communities everywhere.

What: Panel discussion and Q&A on NSF’s Global Centers

When: 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. EST, Wednesday, September 20th, 2023

Where: This briefing [is over.]

Who: Scheduled panelists include…

Anne Emig is the Section Chief for the Programs and Analysis Section in the National Science Foundation Office of International Science and Engineering

Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf is the Principal Investigator for the Global Centers Track 1 project on AI and Biodiversity Change as well as the Director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute and a Professor of Computer Science Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University

Dr. Meng Tao is the Principal Investigator for the Global Centers Track 1 project Global Hydrogen Production Technologies Center as well as a Professor, School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University

Dr. Ashish Sharma is the Principal Investigator for the Global Centers Track 1 project Clean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions as well as the Climate and Urban Sustainability Lead at the Discovery Partners Institute, University of Illinois System

Note: This briefing is only open to members of the media

I’m glad to have learned about this effort and applaud the NSF for its outreach efforts. By comparison, Canadian agencies (I’m looking at you, Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada [NSERC] and Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]) have a lot to learn.

There’s a little more about the Global Centers Competition awards in a September 18, 2023 NSF news release,

Today [September 18, 2023], the U.S. National Science Foundation — along with partner funding agencies from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom — announced awards totaling $76.4 million for the inaugural Global Centers Competition. These international, interdisciplinary collaborative research centers will apply best practices of broadening participation and community engagement to develop use-inspired research on climate change and clean energy. The centers will also create and promote opportunities for students and early-career researchers to gain education and training in world-class research while enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

“NSF builds capacity and advances its priorities through these centers of research excellence by uniting diverse teams from around the world,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “Global Centers will sync talent across the globe to generate the discoveries and solutions needed to empower resilient communities everywhere.”

Global Centers are sponsored in part by a multilateral funding activity led by NSF and four partner funding organizations: Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the United Kingdom’s UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Both collectively and independently, the centers will support convergent interdisciplinary research collaborations focused on assessing and mitigating the impacts of climate change on society, people, and communities. Outcomes from Global Centers’ activities will inform and catalyze the development of innovative solutions and technologies to address climate change. Examples include: enhancing awareness of critical information; advancing and advocating for decarbonization efforts; creating climate change adaptation plans tailored to specific localities and groups; using artificial intelligence to study responses of nature to climate change; transboundary water issues; and scaling the production of next-generation technologies aimed at achieving net zero. Several projects include partnerships with tribal groups or historically Black colleges and universities that will broaden participation.

“The National Science Foundation Global Centres initiative provides students and researchers a platform to advance innovative and interdisciplinary research and gain education and training opportunities in world-class research while also enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,” said NSERC President Alejandro Adem. “We at NSERC look forward to seeing the outcomes of the work being done by some of Canada and the world’s best and brightest minds to tackle one of the biggest issues of our time.”

The awards are divided into two tracks. Track 1 are Implementation grants with co-funding from international partners. Track 2 are Design grants meant to provide seed funding to develop the teams and the science for future competitions. Many additional countries are involved in Track 2 and will increase global engagement.

There are seven Track 1 Global Centers that involve research partnerships with Australia, Canada, and the U.K. Each Track 1 Global Center will be implemented by internationally dispersed teams consisting of U.S. and foreign researchers. U.S. researchers will be supported by NSF up to $5 million over four to five years, while foreign researchers will be supported by their respective country’s funding agency (CSIRO, NSERC, SSHRC and UKRI) with a comparable amount of funds.

There are 14 Track 2 Global Centers that are at the community-driven design stage. These centers’ teams involve U.S. researchers in partnerships with foreign researchers from any country. NSF will provide the U.S. researchers up to $250,000 of seed funding over a two-year period. These multidisciplinary, international teams will coordinate the research and education efforts needed to become competitive for Track-1 funding in the future.

“Our combined investment in Global Centers enables exciting researcher and innovation-led international and interdisciplinary collaboration to drive the energy transition,” said UKRI CEO, Dame Ottoline Leyser. “I look forward to seeing the creative solutions developed through these global collaborations.”

Kirsten Rose, Acting Chief Executive of CSIRO, said as Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO is proud to be part of a strong national contribution to solving this critical global challenge. “Partnering with the NSF’s Global Centers means Australia remains at the global forefront of work to build a clean hydrogen industry, build integrated and equitable energy systems, and partnering with regions and industries for a low emissions future.”

Track 1 (Implementation)

  • Global Hydrogen Production Technologies (HyPT) Center
    Grant number: 2330525
    Arizona State University and U.S. partner institutions: University of Michigan, Stanford University and Navajo Technical University.
    Quadrilateral research partnership with Australia, Canada, and the U.K.
    Critical and Emerging Tech: green hydrogen (renewable energy generation).
     
  • Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society (EPICS)
    Grant number: 2330450
    The Johns Hopkins University and U.S. partner institutions: Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California, Davis, and Resources for the Future.
    Trilateral research partnership with Australia and the U.K.
    Critical and Emerging Tech: renewable energy storage.
     
  • Global Nitrogen Innovation Center for Clean Energy and Environment (NICCEE)
    Grant number: 2330502
    University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and U.S. partner institutions: New York University and University of Massachusetts Amherst.
    Trilateral research partnership with Canada and the U.K.
    Critical & Emerging Tech: green ammonia (bioeconomy + agriculture).
     
  • Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters
    Grant number: 2330317
    University of Michigan and U.S. partner institutions: Cornell University, College of the Menominee Nation, Red Lake Nation and University of Wisconsin–Madison.
    Bilateral research partnership with Canada.
    Critical and Emerging Tech: N/A.
     
  • AI and Biodiversity Change (ABC)
    Grant number: 2330423 
    The Ohio State University and U.S. partner institutions: University of Pittsburgh and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    Bilateral Research partnership with Canada.
    Critical and Emerging Tech: AI.
     
  • U.S.-Canada Center on Climate-Resilient Western Interconnected Grid
    Grant number: 2330582                
    The University of Utah and U.S. partner institutions: University of California San Diego, The University of New Mexico, and The Nevada System of Higher Education.     
    Bilateral Research partnership with Canada.
    Critical and Emerging Tech: AI.
     
  • Clean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions
    Grant number: 2330565
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and U.S. partner institutions: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and Arizona State University.
    Bilateral Research partnership with the U.K.
    Critical and Emerging Tech: N/A
     

Track 2 (Design)

  • Developing Solutions to Decarbonize Emissions and Fuels
    Grant number: 2330509              
    University of Maryland, College Park.
    International collaboration with Japan, Israel, and Ghana.             
     
  • Enhanced Wind Turbine Blade Durability
    Grant number: 2329911              
    Cornell University.
    International collaboration with Canada, the UK, Norway, Denmark, and Spain.
     
  • Building the Global Center for Forecasting Freshwater Futures
    Grant number: 2330211
    Virginia Tech.
    International collaboration with Australia.
     
  • Climate Risk and Resilience: Southeast Asia as a Living Lab (SEALL)
    Grant number: 2330308
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
    International collaboration with Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and India.
     
  • Climate-Smart Food-Energy-Water Nexus in Small Farms
    Grant number: 2330505              
    The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.        
    International collaboration with Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, Cambodia, and Uganda.
     
  • Center for Household Energy and Thermal Resilience (HEaTR)
    Grant number: 2330533              
    Cornell University.
    International collaboration with India, the U.K, Ghana, and Singapore.
     
  • Enabling interdisciplinary wildfire research for community resilience
    Grant number: 2330343              
    Oregon State University.
    International collaborations with Australia and the U.K.
     
  • SuReMin: Sustainable, resilient, responsible global minerals supply chain
    Grant number: 2330041              
    Northwestern University.
    International collaboration with Chile.
     
  • Nature-based Urban Hydrology Center
    Grant number: 2330413              
    Villanova University.
    International collaboration with Canada, the U.K, Switzerland, Ireland, Australia, Chile, and Turkey.
     
  • A multi-disciplinary framework to combat climate-induced desert locust upsurges, outbreaks, and plagues in East Africa
    Grand number: 2330452
    Georgia State University.
    International collaboration with Ethiopia.
     
  • US-Africa Research Center for Clean Energy
    Grant number: 2330437
    Georgia Institute of Technology.
    International collaborations with Rwanda.
     
  • Equitable and User-Centric Energy Market for Resilient Grid-interactive Communities
    Grant number: 2330504
    Santa Clara University.
    International collaboration with Canada.
     
  • Energy Sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples (ESIP)
    Grant number: 2330387
    University of North Dakota.
    International collaboration with Canada.
     
  • Blue Climate Solutions
    Grant number: 2330518              
    University of Rhode Island.
    International collaboration with Indonesia.

For Canadian researchers who are interested, there’s a National Science Foundation Global Centres webpage on the NSERC website, which answers a lot of questions about the programme from a Canadian perspective. The application deadline for both tracks was May 10, 2023 and there’s no information (as of September 20, 2023) about future competitions. Nice to see the social science and humanities included in the form of a funding agency. (I think this might be the one compliment I deliver to a Canadian funding initiative this year. 🙂

For American researchers, there’s the NSF’s Global Centers webpage; for UK researchers, there’s the United Kingdom’s Research and Innovation’s Global Centres in clean energy and climate change webpage; and for Australian researchers, there’s the CSIRO’s National Science Foundation Global Centers webpage. Application deadlines have passed for all of these competitions and there’s no information (as of September 20, 2023) about future competitions.

A few comments

News about local and international affairs (see Seth Borenstein’s September 20, 2023 Associated Press article “UN chief warns of ‘gates of hell’ in climate summit, but carbon polluting nations stay silent”) and one’s own personal experience with climate issues can be discouraging at times so it’s heartening to see these efforts. Kudos to the organizers of the Global Centers programme and I wish all the researchers success.

Given how new these centers are, it’s understandable that the panelists would be a little fuzzy about specific although they’ve clearly considered and are attempting to address issues such as sharing data, trust, and outreach to various stakeholders and communities.

I wish I’d asked about cybersecurity when they were talking about data. Ah well, there was my question about outreach to people over the age of 50 or 55 as so much of their planning was focused on youth. The panelists who responded (Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf, Dr. Meng Tao, and Dr. Ashish Sharma) did not seem to have done much thinking about seniors/elders/older people.

I believe bird watching (as mentioned by one of the panelists) does tend to attract older people but citizen science or other hobbies/programmes mentioned may or may not be a good source for seniors outreach. Almost all science outreach tilts to youth including citizen science.

With the planet is not doing so well and with the aging populations in Canada, the US, many European countries, China, Japan, and I’m sure many others perhaps some new thinking about ‘inclusivity’ might be in order. One suggestion, start thinking about age groups. In the same way that 20 is not 30, is not 40, so 55 is not 65, is not 75. One more thing, perhaps take into account life experience. Something that gets forgotten is that a lot of the programmes that people take for granted and a lot of the technology people use today was developed in the 1960s (e.g. Internet). That old person? Maybe it’s someone who founded the UN’s Environment Program (I was teaching a nanotechnology course in a seniors programme and asked students about themselves; I was intimidated by her credentials).

In the end, this Global Center initiative is heartening news.

Making graphene cheaply by using soybeans

One of the issues with new materials is being able to produce them in a commercially viable fashion and it seems that researchers in Australia may have helped  to do that with graphene. From a Feb. 15, 2017 news item on phys.org,

A breakthrough by CSIRO-led [Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] scientists has made the world’s strongest material more commercially viable, thanks to the humble soybean.

From a Feb. 15, (?) 2017 CSIRO press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme (Note: A link has been removed),

Graphene is a carbon material that is one atom thick.

Its thin composition and high conductivity means it is used in applications ranging from miniaturised electronics to biomedical devices.

These properties also enable thinner wire connections; providing extensive benefits for computers, solar panels, batteries, sensors and other devices.

Until now, the high cost of graphene production has been the major roadblock in its commercialisation.

Previously, graphene was grown in a highly-controlled environment with explosive compressed gases, requiring long hours of operation at high temperatures and extensive vacuum processing.

CSIRO scientists have developed a novel “GraphAir” technology which eliminates the need for such a highly-controlled environment.

The technology grows graphene film in ambient air with a natural precursor, making its production faster and simpler.

“This ambient-air process for graphene fabrication is fast, simple, safe, potentially scalable, and integration-friendly,” CSIRO scientist Dr Zhao Jun Han, co-author of the paper published today in Nature Communications said.

“Our unique technology is expected to reduce the cost of graphene production and improve the uptake in new applications.”

GraphAir transforms soybean oil – a renewable, natural material – into graphene films in a single step.

“Our GraphAir technology results in good and transformable graphene properties, comparable to graphene made by conventional methods,” CSIRO scientist and co-author of the study Dr Dong Han Seo said.

With heat, soybean oil breaks down into a range of carbon building units that are essential for the synthesis of graphene.

The team also transformed other types of renewable and even waste oil, such as those leftover from barbecues or cooking, into graphene films.

“We can now recycle waste oils that would have otherwise been discarded and transform them into something useful,” Dr Seo said.

The potential applications of graphene include water filtration and purification, renewable energy, sensors, personalised healthcare and medicine, to name a few.

Graphene has excellent electronic, mechanical, thermal and optical properties as well.

Its uses range from improving battery performance in energy devices, to cheaper solar panels.

CSIRO are looking to partner with industry to find new uses for graphene.

Researchers from The University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney and The Queensland University of Technology also contributed to this work.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Single-step ambient-air synthesis of graphene from renewable precursors as electrochemical genosensor by Dong Han Seo, Shafique Pineda, Jinghua Fang, Yesim Gozukara, Samuel Yick, Avi Bendavid, Simon Kwai Hung Lam, Adrian T. Murdock, Anthony B. Murphy, Zhao Jun Han, & Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 14217 (2017) doi:10.1038/ncomms14217 Published online: 30 January 2017

This is an open access paper.

Speed of commercializing fashion technology in the 19th century

It took our 19th century ancestors four years to commercialize a new purple dye. While this is not a nanotechnology story as such, it’s a fascinating fashion story that also focuses on commercialization (a newly urgent aspect of the nanotechnology effort). From a Dec. 1, 2015 Elsevier press release on EurekAlert,

The dye industry of the 19th century was fast-moving and international, according to a state-of-the-art analysis of four purple dresses. The study, published in Spectrochimica Acta, Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, reveals that a brand new purple dye went from first synthesis to commercial use in just a few years.

Before the 1800s, purple dye came at a premium, so it was usually restricted to royalty — hence the connection between royals and purple. The 19th century saw the discovery of several synthetic purple dyes, making purple textiles more affordable and readily available. Understanding where these dyes came from and were used is therefore of historical interest.

In the new study, researchers from CSIRO Manufacturing and the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia show that the new purple dyes were part of a fast-moving industry, going from first synthesis to commercial use in as few as four years. This reflects how dynamic the fashion industry must have been at the time.

“Chemical analysis has given us a glimpse into the state of the dye industry in the 19th century, revealing the actual use of dyes around the world,” said Dr. Jeffrey Church, one of the authors of the study and principal research scientist at CSIRO Manufacturing.

The researchers took small samples of fibers from four dresses: three 19th century English dresses and one Australian wedding gown. They extracted the dyes from very small silk yarn samples and analyzed them using a combination of chemical techniques: thin layer chromatography and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy.

They found that the three English dresses were dyed using methyl violet; one of them was made only four years after the dye was first synthesized.

“The dress containing methyl violet was made shortly after the initial synthesis of the dye, indicating the rapidity with which the new synthetic dyes were embraced by the textile dye trade and the fashion world of the day,” commented Dr. Church.

However, the Australian wedding dress incorporated the use of a different dye — Perkin’s mauve — which was very historically significant, as it was the first synthetic purple dye and was only produced for 10 years. This was a surprise to the researchers, as the dress was made 20 years after the dye had been replaced on the market.

“The dress in question was made in Australia,” explained Dr. Church. “Does the presence of Perkin’s mauve relate to trade delays between Europe and Australia? Or was this precious fabric woven decades earlier and kept for the special purpose of a wedding? This is an excellent example of how state-of-the-art science and technology can shed light on the lives and times of previous generations. In doing so, as is common in science, one often raises more questions.”

The researchers have provided an image of the dresses,

Fig. 1. Dress 1 circa 1865, dress 2 circa 1898, dress 3 circa 1878 and dress 4 circa 1885 (clock-wise from left top). Details of these dresses are presented in the Experimental section. [downloaded from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386142515302742]

Fig. 1. Dress 1 circa 1865, dress 2 circa 1898, dress 3 circa 1878 and dress 4 circa 1885 (clock-wise from left top). Details of these dresses are presented in the Experimental section. [downloaded from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386142515302742]

Can you guess which one is the wedding dress? I was wrong. To find out more about the research and the dresses, here’s a link and a citation,

The purple coloration of four late 19th century silk dresses: A spectroscopic investigation by Andrea L. Woodhead, Bronwyn Cosgrove, Jeffrey S. Church. Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy Volume 154, 5 February 2016, Pages 185–192  doi:10.1016/j.saa.2015.10.024

This paper appears to be open access. It’s quite interesting as they trace the history of purple dyes back to ancient times before fast forwarding to the 19th Century.

Primordial goo for implants

Using the words ‘goo’ and ‘nanotechnology’ together almost always leads to ‘end of world’ scenarios referred to as  ‘grey goo‘ or there’s an alternative ‘green goo’ version also known as ecophagy. Presumably, that’s why Australian researchers avoided the word ‘nanotechnology’ in their study of the original goo, primordial goo from which all life oozed, to develop a coating for medical implants. From a Nov. 16, 2015 (Australia) Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) press release (also on EurekAlert),

Australia’s national science research organisation, CSIRO, has developed an innovative new coating that could be used to improve medical devices and implants, thanks to a “goo” thought to be have been home to the building blocks of life.

The molecules from this primordial goo – known as prebiotic compounds – can be traced back billions of years and have been studied intensively since their discovery several decades ago.

For the first time, Australian researchers have uncovered a way to use these molecules to assist with medical treatments.

“We wanted to use these prehistoric molecules, which are believed to have been the source of all life evolving on Earth, to see if we could apply the chemistry in a practical way.” [Dr. Richard Evans, CSIRO researcher]

The team discovered that the coating is bio-friendly and cells readily grow and colonise it.

It could be applied to medical devices to improve their performance and acceptance by the body.

This could assist with a range of medical procedures.

“The non-toxic coating (left) is adhesive and will coat almost any material making its potential biomedical applications really broad,” Dr Evans said.

The researchers also experimented with adding silver compounds, in order to produce an antibacterial coating that can be used on devices such as catheters to avoid infections.

“Other compounds can also be added to implants to reduce friction, make them more durable and resistant to wear,” Dr Evans said.

The coating process the scientists developed is very simple and uses methods and substances that are readily available.

This means biomedical manufacturers can produce improved results more cost effectively compared to existing coatings.

CSIRO is the first organisation to investigate practical applications of this kind using prebiotic chemistry.

“This research opens the door to a host of new biomedical possibilities that are still yet to be explored,” Dr Evans said.

CSIRO is seeking to partner with biomedical manufacturers to exploit this technology.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Prebiotic-chemistry inspired polymer coatings for biomedical and material science applications by Helmut Thissen, Aylin Koegler, Mario Salwiczek, Christopher D Easton, Yue Qu, Trevor Lithgow, and Richard A Evans.  NPG Asia Materials (2015) 7, e225; doi:10.1038/am.2015.122 Published online 13 November 2015

This is an open access paper,

Hector Barron Escobar and his virtual nanomaterial atomic models for the oil, mining, and energy industries

I think there’s some machine translation at work in the Aug. 27, 2015 news item about Hector Barron Escobar on Azonano,

By using supercomputers the team creates virtual atomic models that interact under different conditions before being taken to the real world, allowing savings in time and money.

With the goal of potentiate the oil, mining and energy industries, as well as counteract the emission of greenhouse gases, the nanotechnologist Hector Barron Escobar, designs more efficient and profitable nanomaterials.

The Mexican who lives in Australia studies the physical and chemical properties of platinum and palladium, metal with excellent catalytic properties that improve processes in petrochemistry, solar cells and fuel cells, which because of their scarcity have a high and unprofitable price, hence the need to analyze their properties and make them long lasting.

Structured materials that the specialist in nanotechnology designs can be implemented in the petrochemical and automotive industries. In the first, they accelerate reactions in the production of hydrocarbons, and in the second, nanomaterials are placed in catalytic converters of vehicles to transform the pollutants emitted by combustion into less harmful waste.

An August 26, 2015 Investigación y Desarrollo press release on Alpha Galileo, which originated the news item, continues Barron Escobar’s profile,

PhD Barron Escobar, who majored in physics at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), says that this are created by using virtual supercomputers to interact with atomic models under different conditions before being taken to the real world.

Barron recounts how he came to Australia with an invitation of his doctoral advisor, Amanda Partner with whom he analyzed the electronic properties of gold in the United States.

He explains that using computer models in the Virtual Nanoscience Laboratory (VNLab) in Australia, he creates nanoparticles that interact in different environmental conditions such as temperature and pressure. He also analyzes their mechanical and electronic properties, which provide specific information about behavior and gives the best working conditions. Together, these data serve to establish appropriate patterns or trends in a particular application.

The work of the research team serves as a guide for experts from the University of New South Wales in Australia, with which they cooperate, to build nanoparticles with specific functions. “This way we perform virtual experiments, saving time, money and offer the type of material conditions and ideal size for a specific catalytic reaction, which by the traditional way would cost a lot of money trying to find what is the right substance” Barron Escobar comments.

Currently he designs nanomaterials for the mining company Orica, because in this industry explosives need to be controlled in order to avoid damaging the minerals or the environment.

Research is also immersed in the creation of fuel cells, with the use of the catalysts designed by Barron is possible to produce more electricity without polluting.

Additionally, they enhance the effectiveness of catalytic converters in petrochemistry, where these materials help accelerate oxidation processes of hydrogen and carbon, which are present in all chemical reactions when fuel and gasoline are created. “We can identify the ideal particles for improving this type of reactions.”

The nanotechnology specialist also seeks to analyze the catalytic properties of bimetallic materials like titanium, ruthenium and gold, as their reaction according to size, shape and its components.

Escobar Barron chose to study nanomaterials because it is interesting to see how matter at the nano level completely changes its properties: at large scale it has a definite color, but keep another at a nanoscale, besides many applications can be obtained with these metals.

For anyone interested in Orica, there’s more here on their website; as for Dr. Hector Barron Escobar, there’s this webpage on  Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) website.