Our PhD Student Sara Pugliese presents her research at the Emerging 2026 Summer School on Functional Advanced Materials at ICMAB
As part of the DocFam+ programme, our PhD Student Sara Pugliese delivered a talk at Emerging 2026, an international summer school bringing together early-career researchers and leading experts in functional materials, nanoscience, and interdisciplinary fields, held at ICMAB-CSIC.
On July 1 and 2, 2026, the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), located on the UAB campus in Bellaterra, hosted Emerging 2026 — School on Functional Advanced Materials for Emerging Applications, a two-day international summer school organised within the framework of the DocFam+ programme (co-funded by the European Union). The event brought together leading researchers and early-career scientists to explore current advances and emerging trends across functional materials, nanoscience, and related interdisciplinary fields, with a programme spanning biomaterials and tissue engineering, photonics, electrochemistry, on-surface synthesis of atomically precise nanostructures, and magnetism and spintronics.
The scientific programme featured plenary lectures by internationally recognised researchers, including Prof. Romain Quidant (ETH Zürich), Prof. Maria Rosa Palacin (ICMAB-CSIC), Prof. Giovanni Finocchio (University of Messina), Dr. Gabriela Borin Barin (Empa), and Prof. João F. Mano (University of Aveiro), covering topics from nanophotonics and next-generation batteries to atomically precise graphene nanoribbons and nature-inspired tissue engineering strategies.
Our PhD Student Sara Pugliese (DocFam+ fellow) was selected to present her doctoral research as part of the DocFam+ talks session on July 2. Her presentation focused on the development of bioinspired polyphenolic membranes with electrode properties for biomedical applications, with a particular emphasis on their potential in the neurological fields. These self-supporting, electroactive membranes, derived from the group’s mussel-inspired materials platform, combine the characteristic bioadhesive and redox-active properties of polyphenolic systems with functional electrode behaviour, opening new avenues for their integration into bioelectronic and therapeutic devices at the interface between materials science and clinical neuroscience.
The Nanosfun group’s presence at Emerging 2026 extended beyond Sara’s talk, with Faiz Ullah and Francesca Grieco, both PhD Students of the group, also attending the school, benefiting from the scientific programme, the interdisciplinary exchanges with peers from across Europe, and the professional development activities offered by the DocFam+ framework.
The event concluded with a Career Roundtable with DocFam+ alumni, a poster session, and an awards ceremony, reinforcing the school’s dual mission of scientific training and professional development for the next generation of materials scientists.
This work was supported by grants PID2024-161159OB-I00 and PID2024-161565OB-C21 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF/EU. S.P. acknowledges the DocFam+ programme (ID527) for doctoral funding.
