This year, the Materials Research Society (MRS) of Brazil was meeting in the state of Santa Catarina, in the seaside resort of Balneario Camboriu, in the south of the country. Weather: 20-25 C, sunshine: high with some cloud, water temperature: a bit cold but manageable.
Similar to the other local chapters of the MRS, it is just like a typical MRS meeting, only smaller size. The symposia covered all ranges of materials, soft to hard, inert to living, 1D, 2D or 3D, and included characterization and fabrication processes. A noticeable addition, though, was the local flavor of the meeting.
Indeed, despite being international, 50% + of participants were from Brazil – that is the size of Europe. A few presentations were held in Portuguese. What was also noticeable was the rather young population, with only a few white heads, a lot of undergraduates and Ph.D. students presenting their research, but few of Asian and Indian-looking faces. The atmosphere was at the image of the Brazilian culture: warm and quite relaxed, with quite a few spikes of humor during serious research presentations. My favorite was from an invited plenary speaker arriving straight from California, Prof. Julia R. Greer, Caltech, who is in pursuit of a chocolate nanolattice: “99% of taste and 0.001 % of calories”. This pun is in reference to the metamaterials that her group is printing. These materials are porous with struts of only a few nanometers to provide unusual properties such as compressible and recovering ceramic foams.
Another local flavor was the -expected- virulent discussions on the current status of science and research in Brazil, suffering from harsh funding cuts from the new government. Brazilian researchers are more than happy to find overseas collaborators to carry out technically complicated experiments like in vitro/in vivo testing or to come and use their brand-new synchrotron facilities at Sirius. Maybe related to the colonial history of the state of Santa Catarina with German settlements, or not, there was a special session for Brazil-Germany scientific exchanges that should benefit students. (In this Oktoberfest period, I missed to ask if any German colleagues went to the city of Blumenau (aka Tropical Germany) to celebrate.)
Finally, the Brazilian culture impregnated some of the research, in particular concerning diversity and the environment. For example, one talk emphasized the use of Japanese silk in implant material as Brazil hosts the largest community of Japanese outside Japan. Another talk was related to Malaria detection, in particular for the north of the country, raising questions from the audience above other mosquitoes-transmitted diseases (that I had never heard of). Another presentation described the biodiversity of Amazonia and how some of its fish are interesting for bio-inspiration, for example for structural coloring. It is thus unsurprising that one of the biggest symposium of the meeting was on biological, biopolymer-based and bio-inspired materials, with more than half of the talks related to cellulose, lignin, and other wood-based materials.
Link of the meeting: https://www.sbpmat.org.br/18encontro/
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