Joint workshop to outline future collaboration with IT4Innovation
Carbon dots, one of the most studied nanomaterials of the present time, were the central theme of a joint meeting of CATRIN and IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre entitled “Workshop on Future of Carbon Dots”, which took place in Ostrava. Scientists presented results of many years of research published often in prestigious journals that focus on the design, synthesis and especially the use of these materials.
Carbon dots have a number of unique properties, which include high stability, biocompatibility, low toxicity and, primarily, intense photoluminescence. Thanks to this, they are promising candidates for a wide range of applications, from medicine to optoelectronics.
“I brought the research on carbon dots to Olomouc approximately fifteen years ago on the basis of collaboration with colleagues from Cornell University and partners from Greece, and these ultra-small objects of matter never cease to fascinate me. Over the course of many years, we have understood many of the properties of carbon dots and have been able to use them for many applications in medicine, catalysis or energy. The computational description and design of these materials in collaboration with experimental scientists can open up other unsuspected possibilities, which, I believe, is one of the main conclusions of the workshop,” said Radek Zbořil, who chaired one of the programme sections of the workshop.
Michal Otyepka, head of the second section, evaluated the meeting in the same way. “I believe that the workshop showed new possibilities for collaboration and outlined ways to use mutual synergies,” he said.
According to the director of IT4Innovations, Vít Vondrák, the collaboration with CATRIN, originally based mainly on the use of computing capacities of the Ostrava scientific centre, significantly intensified in 2021.
“With Michal Otyepka being the new leader of the Modelling for Nanotechnologies Lab and its further inclusion of new members of the research team with a strong orientation towards computational chemistry, CATRIN has become a partner for collaboration in the field of materials sciences and nanotechnology. It also turns out that linking IT4I’s know-how in the field of HPC and AI with the experience of the CATRIN teams in the fields of development of new nanomaterials, procedures for their rational design or computer simulations of biomolecules brings successes and interesting scientific results. I firmly believe that other important scientific results will come also in the field of research on carbon dots, which was addressed in this workshop,” said Vondrák.
