MAPEX Symposia

MAPEX Symposium 2021

The 2021 MAPEX symposium „Beyond solar cells: new approaches to radiation conversion“ took place September 29 and 30. In numbers, we had about 110 participants from 17 countries, 12 keynote speakers calling in from the US, China, Netherlands, Finland and Germany and 17 poster presentations. As intended, the scope was very wide, touching on various approaches to energy conversion from radiation. Two Early Career Researchers received a poster price which was generously donated by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The talks were delivered in an online video conference over Zoom which certainly facilitated winning international experts and audience, while the poster sessions in gather.town took on a more playful nature with virtually real interactions in a simulated conference venue. Still, we were happy to have a real-life social event at the climbing hall which allowed us to meet and talk to members of the MAPEX community without any computer screens for the first time in quite a while! The organizing committee thanks all the attendees and everyone who contributed a talk or a poster for making the symposium such a success.

Excited Materials – field-induced out-of-equilibrium phenomena

‘Excited Materials’ were in the focus of the MAPEX Symposium 2019, touching topics from electronic structure modelling to electrical power devices. Over the two days, more than 50 MAPEX members and guests excitedly followed the 26 contributions on ‘field induced phenomena’ in 2D semiconductors, in electrical power devices, in organic functional materials as well as during electron induced reactions or laser-induced thermomechanical surface smoothing.

In the opening lecture, David Field from Aarhus University reported on his idea of THz emission from spontaneously electrical solids. How to use two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy to probe ultrafast nonadiabatic dynamics in organic photovoltaic materials was demonstrated by Antonietta de Sio from the University of Oldenburg. During the first day’s flashlight session early career researchers from the research training group QM³ - Quantum Mechanical Materials Modelling presented their projects, giving short presentations that were discussed in depth during the subsequent poster session. After contributions from Nando Kaminski and Fabio La Mantia, the first day closed with an inspiring talk by Georg Pesch, who exploits dielectrophoretic forces for material-selective particle separation with the final aim of detecting cancer cells in human blood.

The second day started with a lecture on electronic and optical properties of atomically thin semiconductors by Frank Jahnke and was followed by six keynote talks as well a poster session with corresponding flashlight presentations. Special highlights were the talks of Andreas Rosenauer, who showed how to measure electrical polarization on the atomic scale using STEM. Furthermore, Ruchira Pereira impressively demonstrated how self-reporting micro-fibers can be produced by centrifugal force spinning. The programme was rounded off by the welcome address of Nicola Marzari, the new U Bremen Excellence Chair from EPFL in Lausanne.

Further keynote speakers were: Petra Swiderek ("Electron-induced chemistry - Versatile reactions beyond ground state equilibria"), Alexander Kothe ("Lasing in II-VI semiconductor quantum structures"), Mathias Schulz (Otto-Diels-Institute, University of Kiel, "Photoswitchable Silicones: Effects of Azobenzene Isomerization in Solution and in a Free-Standing Film"), Sandro Eckert (BIAS, "Mechanisms of laser-induced thermochemical surface smoothing").
Complete programme (online or pdf).

Process Monitoring

18 - 19 June 2018

Process monitoring was in the focus of this year’s MAPEX Symposium, taking place on 18 and 19 June 2018 in the Haus der Wissenschaft in the city centre. More than 60 participants closely followed the manifold scientific programme. With Sybrand van der Zwaag (TU Delft), Erica Lilleodden (Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht), Raimund Horn (Hamburg University of Technology), and Jörn Viell (RWTH Aachen University) four external experts followed our invitation. Inspiring talks by Erica Lilleodden on “in situ mircomechanical testing” and Andreas Fischer on “speckle-based in-process measurements” were the highlights of the first day with monitoring of manufacturing processes as the main topic. The contributions on the second day were mostly related to catalysis and spectroscopy as a tool for process monitoring. Besides the invited talks, 16 early-career researchers presented a brief overview of their work during the flashlight sessions, inviting the audience for in depth discussion during the subsequent poster exhibition. Two special sessions were dedicated to interdisciplinary research projects that received an “impulse funding” from MAPEX in order to establish and foster new internal cooperation within the MAPEX community. After two days and more than 30 contributions, Kirsten Tracht closed the event with the final talk on “Monitoring of Trends”.

Detailed programme of the Symposium.

MATERIALS INFORMATICS - An emerging research field at the University of Bremen

On 15 September 2017 MAPEX had the honour to host three internationally leading scientists from the still young research field 'materials informatics', attracting more than 50 scientist from the University of Bremen.

The invited talks:

"Computational design and discovery of novel materials"
Nicola Marzari, National Centre for Competence in Research, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland.

"Discovering the science of materials through Informatics"
Krishna Rajan, Department of Materials Design and Innovation, University at Buffalo, USA.

"Materials informatics and big data: realization of 'fourth paradigm' of science in materials science"
Ankit Agrawal, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, USA.

The programme was completed by three keynote talks from the University of Bremen, and by 10 flaslight and poster presentations by Early Career Reserachers from the MAPEX community.

Detailed programme of the symposium.

With a fantastic early summer evening at the promenade of the river Weser “Schlachte”, the members of the International Advisory Board and the organizing committee had a perfect kick-off for the first MAPEX Symposium that took place on June 6^th and 7^th 2016.

The first day was dedicated to the three major fields of the MAPEX research landscape – Materials – Technologies – Methods. Nine MAPEX scientists from all career stages presented their research projects in front of the interdisciplinary audience in the well-filled Olbers-Saal in the “Haus der Wissenschaft”. After the guided city-tour had to be interrupted due to a heavy thunderstorm, a nice dinner at the Restaurant Jürgenshof rounded off the day.

Cooperation projects with the industry were in the focus on the second event day, with two tandem talks given by the MAPEX Principal Investigators Prof. H.-W. Zoch (IWT) and Prof. A. Hermann (FIBRE) together with their cooperation partners Winfried Gräfen (Hanomag Lohnhärterei GmbH, Hannover) and Andre Walter (Airbus Operations, Head of Site and Plant Bremen), respectively. Before the panel meetings took place in the afternoon, a tour through the Laboratory for Precision Machining was scheduled and as another highlight the board members enjoyed a lunch buffet with the nice panorama on the top of the Fallturm.

Detailed programme of the symposium.