InterPore2019: Eight minutes in Valencia

The 11th InterPore general meeting, InterPore2019, is coming! Yes, you probably already know, our community will gather next May in the city of Valencia, Spain, and we are here to make sure that you get every bit of information about this great event. Starting from this newsletter, we will be with you to remind you about important dates, introduce plenary and invited speakers, explore the social program, and, of course, some special things about the city of Valencia, its beautiful sights and tasteful specialties.

But first, let’s break the ice with a simple question: do you know how long it will take you to get from the airport to the InterPore conference venue? Only eight minutes! And from there to the city center? Again only eight minutes! Convenient, isn’t it?

Now that the time reference is set, we are ready to go. Today’s trip will go from anti-fouling and encryption to the Moon. Yes, the Moon, that’s correct. And we are not talking about your ordinary Moon, but “la Luna de Valencia”. That’s a special one. And of course, this one is porous… (well, you are right, actually, the other one is porous too!). Curious? Just keep reading till the end!

An exciting thing about InterPore2019 is that Joanna Aizenberg from Harvard University will give a plenary talk. Dr. Aizenberg pursues a broad range of research interests that include biomimetics, smart materials, wetting phenomena, bio-nano interfaces, self-assembly, crystal engineering, surface chemistry, structural color, and biomineralization. She received her B.S. degree in Chemistry in 1981, M.S. degree in Physical Chemistry in 1984 from Moscow State University, and Ph.D. degree in Structural Biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1996. After spending nearly a decade at Bell Labs, Joanna joined Harvard University, where she is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology and Platform Leader in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

We will keep it short here, but of course you can find more information on the InterPore2019 website, where you can find also the abstract of her talk “Multifunctionality of liquid-filled porous materials: from encryption and anti-fouling to efficient catalysis”. Have you met Joanna Aizenberg already? She will be at InterPore2019!

This is just one example of the amazing things you will be able to learn at InterPore2019. Actually, all information about our plenary and invited speakers is there, online. Anyways, if you have a little bit of patience, just sit back and relax and we will introduce all of them to you in the coming issues. But if you can’t wait, well, just click the link!

Photo: Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC BY-SA

Wouldn’t it be nice to go for a walk at this point? After attending stimulating talks, posters and discussions, what is better than a walk in the Mediterranean spring? For example, how about going to the Serranos towers, the north gates of the old walls of the city? Here is the story: Valencia was fully walled during medieval times, but there was a trend in Spain at the end of the 19th century to tear down the walls of Spanish cities, and so Valencia lost its walls, but not these gates nor the Quart gates because they were being used as prisons at the time. Nowadays, they can be visited and used occasionally as an exhibition place, or as the stage from which to announce to the people of Valencia the start of the Fallas festival at the beginning of March. In Spanish, when you are left out of something it is said “te has quedado a la luna de Valencia”, which translates as “you have been left at the Valencia moon” (here we go!), the origin of which comes from the people who arrived late to the city and found the Serranos gates closed and had to spend the night in the open under the moon. The Serranos gates are a mere 3.3 km from the Conference Center and can be reached in a nice stroll of 45 minutes, in 10 minutes by public transport plus another 10-minute walk, or by taxi in less than 9 minutes. You can consider it this way: going to the Moon from the Conference Center takes virtually the same time that it takes to come from the airport to the Conference Center: InterPore2019 is doing that for you!

Consider the time it took you to read this newsletter and how many things you would have been able to do at InterPore2019 in Valencia in the same time. Impressive, isn’t it? We will be back in two weeks’ time for another eight minutes in Valencia. Meanwhile, we suggest you to start looking for a large pan because it might come in handy by then!