Over 600 graphene stars gather in San Sebastian

San Sebastian, Spain, hosts the world leading researchers working on graphene and related materials (GRMs). Graphene Week 2018 (10 – 14 September) is co-organised by Graphene Flagship partner CIC nanoGUNE, a leading research centre in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Graphene Week is the main conference of the Graphene Flagship, one of Europe's biggest research projects with more than 150 academic and industrial partners and a budget of €1bn. This year, the event will gather around 600 delegates from 43 different countries, and feature an exquisite scientific programme with speakers like Sir Andre Geim (Nobel Prize 2010), Clare Grey (University of Cambridge) and Harry Atwater (Caltech), as well as 30 invited talks, 95 oral presentations and around 300 posters.

The conference in San Sebastian marks an outstanding landmark for the Graphene Flagship. The project just reached the half-way point in its 10-year journey – which is already marked by success stories. The Graphene Flagship has not only pioneered leading-edge research, but also developed a portfolio of services to ensure the future of innovation in GRMs. These include a new roadmap purely focused on graphene innovation and the pioneering of standardisation protocols for GRMs, among others.

On top of that, the Graphene Flagship will organise interesting multidisciplinary workshops during Graphene Week to further expand the scope of the conference. The Graphene Innovation Forum will focus on the commercial applications of GRMs, while other sessions will foster collaborations beyond Europe. For the first time, Graphene Week hosts two International Workshops co-organised with scientific researchers in the United States and Korea. Moreover, in line with the ideals of the Graphene Flagship, that aim to promote diversity and equality, we set up the Women in Graphene sessions. Finally, we also organise several sessions to broaden the horizons of the project – Graphene for Human Space Exploration promotes the collaboration of the European Space Agency and NATO, and the Graphene Flagship's Open Forum, moderated by renowned science communicator Zuberoa Marcos, celebrates the latest results and achievements of the Graphene Flagship with key stakeholders.

José María Pitarke, Director of nanoGUNE, is the Graphene Week 2018 Conference Chair. He believes the conference has "an ambitious programme, including a good number of keynote speakers and invited talks as well as specific workshops. It has been designed with the objective of bringing together the most outstanding advances that scientists and companies are achieving in the field of graphene and related materials."

Jari Kinaret, Director of the Graphene Flagship explains that, "Graphene Week is the Graphene Flagship's premier annual conference, an occasion where hundreds of academic and industrial researchers come together to exchange ideas and get inspiration across the entire Flagship. As a leading international conference, Graphene Week is a place for Flagship researchers to interact with friends and colleagues from all over the world, specially within the Korea-EU and US-EU workshops that take place in conjunction with the conference."

Prof. Andrea C. Ferrari, Science and Technology Officer of the Graphene Flagship and Chair of its management panel, added that "Graphene Week is the main forum to discuss science and technology of graphene and related materials. This will allow us to learn from the leading groups worldwide what is the state of the art, and more importantly, where the field is going. Amongst the many events, this year we will have the first workshop on space applications, one of the emerging areas where graphene shows potential for exploitation."

Kinaret is keen on celebrating the meeting in San Sebastian, "one of the pronounced European hubs of graphene technology. I am looking forward to a productive meeting in the beautiful Basque Country." "We are looking forward to welcoming Graphene Week to the city of San Sebastian, where our objective is to place the Basque Country at the forefront of nanoscience research, thus contributing to the creation of the necessary conditions for the society to benefit from a wide range of nanotechnologies," concludes Pitarke.