WISE participates in Bioelectronics and Sustainability symposium in Stockholm

The event was co-organized by the Scientific Office of the Italian Embassy and the University of Stockholm and was coordinated by Augusto Marcelli, scientific attaché in Stockholm, and Erica Zeglio, Assistant Professor and WISE Fellow at the Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry at Stockholm University.

Several WISE researchers contributed to the program, such as Assoc.Prof. Eleni Stavrinidou, Prof. Daniel Simon, Asst.Prof. Alexander Giovannitti, Assoc.Prof. Simone Fabiano and the Director of WISE, Prof. Magnus Berggren. The event represented the first bilateral platform to exchange ideas and discuss the prospects and challenges of the next generation of sustainable bioelectronics, an area that integrates chemistry, biology, and electronics and which aims to promote resource conservation while minimizing waste production in different applications.

– As a WISE Fellow, it was a great privilege to co-organize this event together with the Italian Embassy and to bring the Swedish and Italian community together to discuss sustainability issues in my field of research says Asst.Prof. Erica Zeglio.

Aware that sustainability will play an increasingly important role in the future, the initiative addressed emerging issues in the field of bioelectronics. Central focus was the recent advances and opportunities at the intersection of innovation and sustainability, fundamental to technology, industry, and the policies of the European Union.

The event featured the participation of several students at the universities within the Stockholm area and 25 invited speakers from Italy and Sweden. Representing Italian institutions were the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan and Ferrara, the Universities of Bari, Bologna, Ferrara, Modena Reggio Emilia, and Milano Bicocca. Represented Swedish institutions were Chalmers University of Technology, Linköping University, Stockholm University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet as well as organizations such as RISE, SUCCeSS, AIMES, WISE, and the Swedish Research Council.

The program closed with a round table discussion led by Prof. Anna Herland and attended by, in addition to the Scientific Attaché, Prof. Luisa Torsi, vice president of the CNR, Prof. Gianluca Farinola, president of the Italian Chemistry Society, Dr. Lucas Pettersson, responsible for international collaborations of the Swedish Research Council, Assoc. Prof. Simone Fabiano of Linköping University and Wallenberg Academy Fellow, and Dr. Peter Andersson Ersman, responsible for research and development activities in bioelectronics at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. The discussion addressed various topics, including possible initiatives aimed at encouraging greater collaboration in this sector between researchers from the two countries. Emphasis was placed on the role of the institutions involved to encourage research, the exchange of young researchers, and to involve SMEs and startups, the latter being particularly active in Sweden.