CATEN co-organized a workshop at the Nanocon conference

The design of new materials and their various applications including nanomedicine, sensing, catalysis, and energy storage were the main topics of the TECHSCALE workshop held as part of the Nanocon 2025 conference in Brno. The joint event organized by CATEN and the Czech Advanced Technology and Research Institute (CATRIN) attracted great interest from researchers.

“The aim of the workshop was to share our achievements so far, discuss our research directions, and strengthen our cooperation. The presentations covered materials design that goes beyond the nanoscale and their use in various applications, including nanomedicine, sensing, catalysis, and energy storage.  Face-to-face meetings are very valuable as they give us time to showcase our results, meet informally, exchange knowledge and insights and come up with new ideas. All of this can then be transformed into new activities and projects,” said the project’s principal investigator, Michal Otyepka from CATEN and CATRIN.

The benefits of the event have also been confirmed by another speaker, Michal Mazur from Charles University. “Meetings like this are essential for conducting complementary research and working effectively within the Consortium. It’s important for me to know what the others are engaged in and which methods they are using. In return, I can present my own results and offer our methods. I think the workshop was very beneficial,” he said.

NANOCON has long been one of the leading international meetings in nanotechnology. In previous years, it has hosted top researchers such as 2023 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry Louis Brus and Swiss materials scientist Michael Grätzel, one of the most cited researchers in the world. This year again, the conference attracted globally renowned experts. Indrajit Ghosh from VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, one of only nine invited speakers, presented the outcomes of his research in photoredox catalysis. Yazhou Zhou, who recently joined VSB-TUO from the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, introduced new directions in the usage of single-atom catalysts, including their applications for converting carbon dioxide into high-value-added chemicals.

This year’s NANOCON conference was attended by nearly 300 researchers from 32 countries — the highest number in the past five years.