Wrap up of 2022!

Many things to be grateful for happened this year. All the Early stage researchers successfully started their Ph.D., journey, a strong and interesting work team was consolidated which joined three training schools (Toulouse, Milan, and Darmstadt) and some of them already started their secondments, like Luca Stendardo (ESR 1), who is currently working at ISAE-SUPAERO learning about simulations of ice detachment in metallic surfaces at dynamic conditions; there, he is sharing with Giulia Gastaldo (ESR 9) and Pau Riera (ESR 12), the latter also as part of his secondment.

Further, In november 2022, Gabriel Hernandez Rodriguez finished his two-moth period at Technische Universität Darmstadt. He was hosted by ESR3 (Mingyue Ding) and prof. Ilia Roisman. Through this collaboration, they studied supercooled droplet impact on the coatings developed by Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (iCVD) at TU Graz. The outcomes will help understand the anti-icing performance of the coatings under various environmental conditions.

By the end of the year, the director of the project Carlo Antonini was the protagonist of the most recent edition of Langmuir (the accurate illustration was done by Héloïse Chochois).

On the occasion of the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities”, Carlo tells us his way to turn the limitations into unique opportunities to learn how to do things in new manners.

Some days after, on December 21, 2022, Carlo delivered an online lecture titled “Formulating a rational framework for the design of icephobic surfaces: a SURFICE story” at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), in Chengdu, China. The lecture was virtually organized and hosted by the group of Prof. Longquan Chen, who leads a research group on Condensed Matter Physics in the School of Physics at UESTC.

During the talk, Prof. Antonini presented the structure, the goals, and the first outcomes of SURFICE to disseminate the project results and promote future collaborations with Chinese research institutions.

We hope our next yer will be as satifactory as the previous one, to continue strengthening our networks and share our advances regarding the developing of anti-icing materials

Thanks for sharing this exciting path with us, and stay tunned to be updated of our most recent findings on 2023!