Outreach

Events

Connecting cutting-edge research with education early on is key to capturing students’ imagination and encouraging them toward meaningful careers. During Lund University’s NMT‑dagarna outreach week in March 2025, I delivered two public lectures titled “From Birds to Photons: Collective Phenomena in Materials Science” to secondary‑school students who had travelled to Lund from across Sweden. The lectures introduced the ideas of coupling, feedback, and emergent behaviour, illustrated with everyday examples such as starling murmurations, synchronous flashing of fireflies and synchronized audience applause.

At the end of each lecture, we did a demo of synchronizing metronomes, to connect the discussed examples with ongoing research in our Nanochemistry and Spectroscopy Group. 

Interactive laboratory "Rivoluzione Energetica: A Tutta Nanochimica!" (Energy Revolution: It's All About Nanochemistry) at the Festival of Science in Genova, 2018. This outreach activity consisted of six guided stations through which the visitors got acquainted with fundamental concepts behind photovoltaics and photoluminescence as well as with contemporary nanotechnology research: solar materials: old and new, nanochemistry and light, measuring colors, inside the solar cell, solar races, and crystals out of crystals. The laboratory was attended by approx. 600 people over the course of the Festival (majority were middle school students) and guided with a help of graduate students from the University of Genova and IIT. Created in collaboration with Stefano Toso and with a support from Research Organization Office at IIT and MSCA-IF.

Social Media & Blogs

• Regular participant in #FluorescenceFriday on Twitter (Runner-up in the ReactionPic category of 2018 C&EN News Real Time Chem Awards);

• @RETAIN_H2020 Twitter account for updates and news about the MSCA-IF project and the world of self-assembly; 

• "Superlattices and a Frying Pan" (LinkedIn blog post, February 2, 2019);

• "Capturing Energy of Light with Nanocubes." (IIT's International Talk Series, November 19, 2019);