De Copas con Ciencia: Pilar López Ram de Viu & Giuseppina Tommasini
The chemist in love who revolutionised science and nanomedicine, this month in the special 11F of “De Copas con Ciencia”
This Thursday, 29 February, a new session of the successful popular science project “De Copas con Ciencia” will take place. An initiative that aims to satisfy the scientific curiosity of the population in a relaxed, entertaining and fun way during leisure time, bringing it to the bars. The activity is aimed at the whole population with scientific curiosity without the need for specific training in science and aims to be a meeting point for science lovers in order to facilitate the creation of scientific debates between experts and the general public.
The activity is organised by the research institutes, ISQCH (Instituto de Síntesis Química y Catálisis Homogénea) e INMA (Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón), both joint centres CSIC – University of Zaragoza, and will be repeated periodically on the last Thursday of each month. During these sessions, topics related to chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science will be discussed.
This month, the activity joins the celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which aims to raise awareness of the role of women researchers in science and to awaken scientific vocations from an early age.
The session, with free admission, will take place on 29 February at 20:00 at El Sótano Mágico, Calle San Pablo 43, Zaragoza (http://elsotanomagico.com/) and will feature the researchers Raluca Fratila and María Josefa Bernad.
“Marie-Anne, the chemist in love who revolutionised science” Pilar López Ram de Viu, researcher at ISQCH (CSIC-UNIZAR)
In the 18th century, two revolutions started in France overturned the world: the French Revolution and the Chemistry Revolution. Marie-Anne Lavoisier and her husband, Antoine, reworked the field of chemistry, which until then had been dominated by the idea of phlogiston, which came from alchemy. Marie was Antoine’s necessary and indispensable collaborator in bringing this revolution to fruition: her role was key in the understanding of the composition of air and the role of oxygen, in the propagation of the new ideas among the scientific society of the time and in her husband’s legacy for posterity.
Pilar López Ram de Viu holds a PhD in Chemical Sciences (1991), is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Organic Chemistry (2000) and a researcher at ISQCH. Her research work has focused on obtaining compounds with potential biological activity in enantiomerically pure form, both by selective synthesis and by separation. She is currently working on obtaining value-added products from glycerol from biodiesel production. In addition to his teaching and research work, he has held several university management positions, and is actively involved in various scientific dissemination projects.
“Hydra vulgaris for nanomedicine” – INMA researcher Giuseppina Tommasini
The secret of eternal youth lies in the genome of Hydra vulgaris. Indeed, this small freshwater polyp is known for its extraordinary regenerative capacity and has historically been used for studies in developmental biology and regenerative medicine. In recent years, Hydra has established itself as an innovative model for studying the interactions between new nanomaterials and biological systems, making it an ideal organism for the development of new applications in nanomedicine and bioelectronics.
Giuseppina holds a degree in biology from the University of Naples Federico II and a Master’s degree in molecular biology from the same university. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Zaragoza and develops her thesis work in the Bionanosurf group of INMA, under the supervision of Dr. Maria Moros. Her research focuses on the study of the interactions between new nanomaterials, organic or inorganic, with in vitro (cell lines) and in vivo (H.vulgaris) models for basic research and for the development of new biomedical applications.
In addition, during the session there will be a face-to-face Hi Score Science competition aimed at the general public that will reward the scientific knowledge acquired by the attendees with an informative book. Hi Score Science is a game of questions and answers about science, in Spanish and English, for mobile devices, iOS and Android that is developed between the two research institutes, the ISQCH and INMA, which allows to include explanations of the scientific reality behind each of the answers. The game can be downloaded free of charge and without advertising at Apple Store https://goo.gl/q1NjKy and Play Store: https://goo.gl/GgWq6N and for Windows, iOS and Linux at www.HiScoreScience.org. The app also allows users to participate in the project by sending their own questions via a dedicated website www.hiscorescience.org.
Please find attached the poster and images of the speakers and attendees from the previous edition.
