Ural Federal University: Winter School of Solid State Chemistry Took Place at the University

Winter School of Solid State Chemistry was held at Ural Federal University from February 9 to 11. Due to the online format, the participants could attend lectures by leading Russian and foreign scientists. The geography of this year’s lecturers covered nine time zones: from Japan to Great Britain.

The Russian lecturers include Alexander Nemudryy, Director of the Institute of Solid State Chemistry and Mechanochemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk), Sergey Istomin, Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry at Moscow State University (Moscow), and Anastasia Korytzeva, Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry at Nizhny Novgorod State University (Nizhny Novgorod).

International lecturers included prominent researchers in the field of solid state chemistry: Dr. A. Belik (National Institute of Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan), Andrey Klyndyuk (Belarusian State Technological University, Minsk, Republic of Belarus), Dr. N. Tarakina, Dr. J. Hou (Max-Planck-Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung, Potsdam, Germany), and Dr. J. K. Hoffmann (Institute of Materials Science, Moscow, Russia).

The scientific results were also presented by novice scientists from Ural Federal University. The topics of lectures and reports were related to obtaining, structure and properties of the newest materials used in various devices, possibilities of modifying and improving materials as well as modern methods of their research. The abstracts will be published as a collection of papers.

When summarizing the results of the school, Edkhem Kurumchin (Institute of High-Temperature Chemistry, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) noted the variety of reports that proved interesting not only to the young participants, but also to experienced researchers.

According to the organizers, the online format greatly expands the possible boundaries of the participants, but still deprives them of live informal communication. This drawback was partially corrected by the cultural program of the school. After the presentations, participants could listen to a musical lecture by Sergey Nokhrin, associate professor of the Department of Fundamental and Applied Chemistry, and watch a traditional “Club of the Funny and Inventive” between students and young chemists from the Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UrFU.