Graphene Week celebrates 20 years of graphene

The Open Forum on opening day explored the progress made in graphene research and commercialisation, the Graphene Flagship's role in this work and the panellists’ expectations for the future of 2DM. Experts representing a full range of perspecitves on the initiative contributed to the discussion on how 2DM will impact future industries and Europe’s place in their technological ecosystems.

For the first time, the Graphene Week programme included contributions from all 14 of the Graphene Flagship projects launched as part of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe funding cycle. An exhibition allowed the more than 400 delegates from 46 countries to learn about the projects and how to collaborate with them in the future. Workshops co-hosted by the projects helped to bring their expertise in the Graphene Flagship’s six key focus areas to the forefront.

The Graphene Flagship’s annual conference featured keynote talks from Yury Gogotsi, A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute; Vladimir Falko, University of Manchester; Valeria Nicolosi and Jonathan Coleman, Trinity College Dublin; and Arben Merkoçi, ICN2 Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group. Overall the conference welcomed over 200 speakers and 164 poster presenters.

As with the past several editions, Graphene Week welcomed industry to explore innovation and commercialisation of applications containing 2D materials in the three-day Innovation Forum. The session featured sessions on roadmapping, standardisation and the successful implementations and challenges in 2DM from both start-ups and larger corporations. 

Four students received special honors for their exceptional poster presentations. Robin Smeyers from the University of Antwerp won the award for the Best Poster on Fundamentals. Trinity College Dublin’s Jack Maughan won the award for Best Poster on Sustainable Use. Michal Poplinger from Bar-Ilan University was awarded Best Poster on Applications. Finally, the Best Poster on Processing was awarded to Juliette Jolivet from Thales Research & Technology. These four poster winners will receive a €600 poster prize from our conference sponsors: IOP Publishing and Chalmers University of Technology Areas of Advance Materials Science. Students also had the opportunity to be trained and certified as peer reviewers in IOP Publishing's Peer Review Excellence workshop.  

Ilaria Meazzini presented the Royal Society of Chemistry’s latest inclusion and diversity report on Disability in the chemical sciences as part of the annual Diversity in Graphene session. The report highlights the benefits of reducing barriers to inclusion for all scientists and ways that institutions can plan for environments and processes with inclusion in mind. Personal anecdotes from Diana Marcano from Poznań Institute of Technology and Joyce Matsoso from the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague highlighted the different journeys that scientists can take and the unique barriers that they faced due to gender, racial and cultural differences.

We look forward to welcoming the graphene community for Graphene Week 2025 in Italy.