UCT Catalytic Fall seminar 2025

On October 2 and 3, together with colleagues from the Department of Sustainable Fuels and Green Chemistry (FTOP), we organized a second edition of two-day UCT Catalytic Fall seminar. The seminar was mainly aimed at PhD students and aims to deepen their knowledge in the field of catalysis, improve their presentation and communication skills and enable them to receive quality feedback from renowned experts. As part of the seminar, two world-renowned speakers were invited, assoc. Prof. Valentina Crocella (University of Torino) and Prof. Magnus Rønning (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), on the grounds of the UCT.
 
The first day of the seminar was dedicated to a workshop with PhD students from both departments, who prepared short presentations on the topic of their research and focused on areas where they perceived their weaknesses. Invited speakers then provided constructive feedback and helped students find new directions for their research. On the second day, two public lectures took place, in which the guests presented rather educational contributions focused on the two techniques of characterization of heterogeneous catalysts. The listeners thus became familiar with the basic principles and key aspects of mainly infrared spectrocopy and temperature programed techniques.
We are very pleased that we managed to organize this seminar, which was attended by many PhD students. We are looking forward to the next year next autumn, this time on the topic "Industrial Catalysis".