Friday 7 April 2017

From Bits to Batteries - Cafe Scientifique Post-Mortem

On Monday, April 3rd, FMD group member, Dr Chris Handley, gave his talk, "From Bits to Batteries", to a public audience thanks to the local Café Scientifique organisation. Café Scientifique is place for academics and researchers to present their work to a public audience, consisting largely of non-experts. Outreach opportunities such as these are an ideal way to demonstrate the value of academic research, and the value of investment into research.


Douglas Bell, who helps organise the Sheffield Café Scientifique events was able to attend,


"Christopher explained the chemistry and the computation approaches clearly. He displayed both in-depth knowledge and enormous enthusiasm for the topics. Visuals were rich in useful diagrams and animations. He handled questions sensitively and helpfully.

The talk was pitched just right for an audience with limited science background. It was well received and fitted well within the programme of Café Scientifique."

Chris' talk demonstrated the importance of computational simulations as a underpinning research tool for materials design and discovery, and generated some excellent discussion, with audience members eager to further understand the future implications of machine learning in the field, and further examples of how simulation and experiment works in tandem within the FMD group.

In the future we hope to present more of our work at these public gatherings, and perhaps have PhD students give shorter presentations as a group.

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