Forty-nine (49) proposals were submitted by the international scientific community within the XIX B-MRS Meeting + IUMRS ICEM symposium call. The number of submissions is one of the largest in the history of B-MRS events. “We received proposals from 18 different countries,” says Professor Gustavo Dalpian, chair of the event.
The organizing committee is already working on the analysis of the proposals, in order to solve cases of thematic overlap and to ensure the symposia are adequate to the structure of the event. When necessary, the committee will contact the authors of the proposals. The final list of symposia will be announced as soon as possible on the event website, B-MRS website, B-MRS Newsletter and social media. In February 2020, the abstract submission will be opened.
About the event
The event, which will be held from August 30 to September 3, 2020 at the Rafain Palace Hotel in Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil), will bring together the nineteenth edition of B-MRS annual meeting and the seventeenth edition of the international conference on electronic materials organized every two years by IUMRS.
In addition to symposia oral and poster presentations, the program will include plenary lectures by leading scientists such as Alex Zunger (University of Colorado Boulder, USA), Edson Leite (LNNano, Brazil), Hideo Hosono (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan), John Rogers (Northwestern University, USA), Luisa Torsi (Università degli Studi di Bari “A. Moro”, Italy) and Tao Deng (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China).
The event is coordinated by professors Gustavo Martini Dalpian (UFABC) in the general coordination, Carlos Cesar Bof Bufon (LNNANO) in the program coordination and Flavio Leandro de Souza (UFABC) as general secretary. At the international committee, the event features scientists from America, Asia, Europe and Oceania.
B-MRS’s Board of Directors created, in October of this year, the José Arana Varela Award. This new honor from B-MRS pays tribute to Professor José Arana Varela, a prominent Brazilian materials scientist and former president of B-MRS, who passed away in 2016.
This is an annual award that will be bestowed to a leading researcher in Brazil, who will deliver one of the plenary lectures at B-MRS Meeting. In 2020, the recipient will be Edson Roberto Leite, full professor at UFSCar and scientific director of the Brazilian Nanotechnology National Laboratory (LNNano).
About Professor José Arana Varela
Prof. José Arana Varela (1944 – 2016).
Born in Martinópolis, São Paulo State (Brazil), on April 11, 1944, José Arana Varela graduated in Physics from the University of São Paulo (USP) in 1968. In 1975, he obtained his Master’s degree in Physics from the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA). He completed his doctorate in ceramic materials (1977 to 1981) at the University of Washington (United States).
Arana Varela was a Full Professor at the Paulista State University Júlio de Mesquita Filho (Unesp), where he began his academic career in 1969. He was also a Professor at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), where he worked since 1985, mainly in the graduate programs in Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering.
As a researcher, Arana Varela worked in the field of ceramic materials, making important international contributions to electroceramics and ceramic thin films, and their applications in varistors, ferroelectric memories and chemical sensors.
In Brazil, he led the development of these research lines, beginning in 1988 with the founding, together with other professors of UFSCar, of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Electrochemistry and Ceramics (LIEC), which was the seed of the Multidisciplinary Center for the Development of Ceramic Materials (CMDMC), which created the Center for the Development of Functional Materials (CDMF).
Professor Varela supervised or co-supervised at least 30 master’s and over 40 doctoral works. He co-authored more than 600 articles published in international journals, with more than 20,000 citations. He also authored patents and participated in various projects interacting with the industry.
A strong supporter of international collaboration as a driver of scientific and technological advancement, Arana Varela maintained such cooperation throughout his career with research groups from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia and Italy, as well as Brazil.
In parallel to his distinguished career as a researcher and professor, José Arana Varela had a broad performance in management or advisory positions. At the São Paulo State Research Foundation (Fapesp), he was the director-president of the Technical-Administrative Council from 2012 to 2016 and vice-president of the Superior Council from 2007 to 2010. At Unesp, he was the first Pro-Rector of Research (2005-2009), as well as founder and director of the Unesp Innovation Agency (2009-2012). He was also a member of the Superior Council for Innovation and Competitiveness of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), member of advisory committees of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and director at the Brazilian Association of Metallurgy and Materials (ABM) and the Brazilian Ceramic Association (ABCeram). Finally, starting in 2015, he was a board member of the Ceramic and Glass Industry Foundation, the arm of ACerS (The American Ceramic Society), dedicated to developing professionals for the global ceramic and glass industry.
Arana Varela was a fellow of ACerS and a member of The World Academy of Ceramics and the Materials Research Society (MRS). Professor Varela was also a member of several Brazilian scientific societies, such as the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), the São Paulo State Academy of Sciences and the Brazilian Society of Physics (SBF).
At B-MRS, the scientist was a founding member, part of the founding board, and served as chief financial director from 2004 to 2005, and as president from 2010 to 2011.
Arana Varela was a member of the editorial board of the journals Ceramics International, Science of Sintering, Cerâmica, and Materials Research. He received more than twenty national and international awards and distinctions, such as the Premio Épsilon de Oro (2003) of the Sociedad Española de Cerámica y Vidrio, the Scopus Capes-Elsevier Award (2006) for his scientific production, and two awards from the American Ceramic Society, the Global Star Award (2013) and the Bridge Builder Award (2014).
José Arana Varela passed away on May 17, 2016, at the age of 72, after battling cancer for three years.
In the context of the thematic research grant “Nonlinear Photonics: Spectroscopy and Advanced Processing of Materials”, sponsored by the São Paulo State Research Foundation (FAPESP), we invite applications for two post-doctorate positions in the fields of (i) Nonlinear spectroscopy of materials and (ii) Femtosecond laser processing of materials. In every of the available fellowships, we are looking for candidates with scientific independence and willingness to work in collaboration with students and other researchers.
Each post-doctorate fellowship will be granted for a period of 24 months. The requirements and benefits established in http://fapesp.br/en/5427 apply. The benefits include: a tax-free stipend of R$ 7,373.10 per month, subsidy to cover travel and installation expenses (for researchers who do not reside in the city of Campinas/Brazil) and research contingency funds (R$ 13,271.40 per year), to cover travelling and other expenses that are related to the research project.
A team of students from the Brazilian Federal University of ABC (UFABC) created the twelfth unit of B-MRS’s University Chapters (UCs) program. The new UC is made up of 4 Master’s degree students in Materials Science and Engineering and 6 Master’s students in Nanosciences and Advanced Materials, in addition to the group advisor, Professor Márcio Gustavo Di Vernieri Cuppari.
“We hope to bring together the students of the two postgraduate programs, as well as undergraduate students,” says Isabela Coutinho, president of UC – UFABC. “We hope that these meetings, in the form of scientific events, will facilitate the dissemination of the materials area among students of the ABC community. We also hope to enrich the education of undergraduate and graduate students through the influence of B-MRS,” adds the Master’s student in Materials, who won one of the Bernhard Gross Awards at the XVIII B-MRS Meeting, held from 22 to 26 September of this year in Balneário Camboriú.
To this end, the team plans to invite internal and external researchers to lectures and workshops and to hold scientific outreach meetings and exchange experiences. In addition, says the president, the team would like to receive suggestions for activities that have been successfully performed in other UCs and which can be carried out by the UFABC group.
The UC – UFABC, which was created on August 1st of this year, has a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/UCUFABC/) where it has already started to promote its activities.
Within the UCs program, B-MRS has 12 teams of students from federal, state and community universities located in the five Brazilian regions. These groups develop complementary activities to their academic development.
The current president of B-MRS, Professor Osvaldo Novais de Oliveira Junior (IFSC-USP), is part of the triple list sent to the governor of the State of São Paulo to select the new scientific director of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). The list was defined by the Superior Council of FAPESP after the election, which had 13 candidates.
Forty-nine (49) proposals were submitted by the international scientific community within the XIX B-MRS Meeting + IUMRS ICEM symposium call. The number of submissions is one of the largest in the history of B-MRS events. “We received proposals from 18 different countries,” says Professor Gustavo Dalpian, chair of the event.
