More than 1,200 chemists to attend a scientific congress in Zaragoza next week
More than 1,200 chemists to attend a scientific congress in Zaragoza next week
Zaragoza has a lot of Chemistry and next week the city will host 1,200 chemists who will attend the XXXIX Biennial Meeting of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), to be held in the Zaragoza Auditorium. The participants will include more than a hundred experts from international research centres, such as the Nobel Prize winner Benjamin List, an innovator in organocatalytic processes as a gateway to the sustainable preparation of new drugs, who will give the inaugural lecture.
This top-level scientific meeting, which will take place from Sunday 25 in the afternoon until 29 June, will feature a total of 16 thematic symposia, more than 150 invited oral presentations, 700 scientific papers and several round tables that will review the role of chemistry in the latest advances in new drugs, smart materials, advances in the circular economy of materials and waste, sustainability and chemical processes to mitigate climate change, among other topics. In addition, this meeting wanted to reach out to the public with the installation of the informative exhibition “Zaragoza has Chemistry”, which can now be visited in the city centre, on Paseo Independencia.
The holding of this scientific meeting in the Aragonese capital represents a recognition of the high level that Chemistry enjoys in Zaragoza, as was highlighted today by the scientific and organising committee at the presentation of the programme in the auditorium of the University of Zaragoza.
“Despite the leadership of Chemistry in Zaragoza during a large part of the last century, a Biennial had never been held in our city. Undoubtedly, this Biennial will make visible and further enhance the extraordinary potential for R&D&I in the area of Chemistry in our autonomous community of Aragon”, emphasised Fernando Lahoz, president of the Biennial’s organising committee and CSIC researcher at the Institute of Chemical Synthesis and Homogeneous Catalysis of Aragon (ISQCH), a joint CSIC-UNIZAR centre.
Blanca Ros, professor at the University of Zaragoza and researcher at the Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA), a joint CSIC-UNIZAR centre, described the historical link between Chemistry and Zaragoza as a “perfect tandem”. “Zaragoza should be proud and very satisfied with the University of Zaragoza’s training role in chemistry, which is recognised nationally and internationally, and which has allowed it to always occupy the top positions, between fifth and seventh in the national ranking of universities”, he affirmed.
Structure of the scientific meeting
The wide-ranging programme is structured around 16 thematic symposia on the major challenges currently facing chemical research. Topics such as “The Chemistry of Nanomedicine”, “Chemical Engineering and Sustainable Development”, “Computational Methods in Chemistry” and “Chemistry for Emerging Energy Technologies” are some of the topics that will be the focus of the participants’ debates.
In addition to the more than 150 invited oral presentations, more than 700 flash papers or scientific posters will be presented during the congress, the latter of which are undoubtedly high-quality contributions from the young researchers attending this Biennial.
In collaboration with the Federation of Chemical Companies of Aragon (FEQPA), the Biennial of Chemistry, in this edition, incorporates a series of round tables on topics of relevance for the future of the chemical profession and to improve and stimulate the interaction between the research developed in public centres and the R&D&I centres of the companies. The topics addressed by these round tables, open to the general public on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, will reflect on the new chemical processes and technologies to be developed, the training of chemistry professionals in the 21st century, the improvement of company-academia collaborations and the transformations that artificial intelligence can bring to the field of chemistry.
Special mention should also be made of the outstanding speakers taking part in these round tables: Juan A. Labat (director general of the Spanish Federation of Chemical Companies), Javier García (president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), César Romero (director general of the San Valero Group), José Manuel Pingarrón (secretary general of Universities), José Antonio Mayoral (rector of the University of Zaragoza), Ana Castro (vice-president of Knowledge Transfer at the CSIC) and Fernando Cossio (scientific director of Ikerbasque), among others.
Likewise, the informative exhibition “Zaragoza has Chemistry”, installed in the Paseo Independencia, was also presented. It was created on the occasion of the Biennial in an attempt to bring to the public, in an entertaining and informative way, the subjects dealt with in the Biennial that are expected to change our lives at some point in the future. In addition, the historical relationship between Chemistry and the Aragonese capital has been highlighted, thanks to the training provided by the University of Zaragoza. The 12 exhibition panels, with brief and entertaining texts, review the often unsuspected presence of Chemistry in many areas of our lives: from the environment, energy, pharmaceuticals, food, agriculture, construction, health, technology, catalysis, to new materials, chemistry and petroleum.
The organisers have invited the public to visit this exhibition in the heart of the city and discover what chemistry does for each of us.
Full programme on the website: https://bqz2023.com/index.php/es/
Press conference on the UNIZAR YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/HRK2KnRxxBY
Attached are pictures of the organisers Fernando Lahoz and Blanca Ros during the presentation and at the exhibition in Independencia
