Professor Wojciech Grochala, leader group at the Center of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, visited the Institute of Molecular Science-ICMol within the annual program of conferences, ICMOL-Talks. He lectured “Cornucopia of surprises from Ag(2+), a heavier analogue of Cu(2+)” and spent a full working day with researchers, students and colleagues, invited by professor Eugenio Coronado, ICMol’s founding director.
Professor Wojciech Grochala’s career has been linked to the University of Warsaw. Since 2004 he leads the Laboratory of Technology of Novel Functional Materials. He spent postdoctoral stays in the USA and he took part at Cornell University of the team of Roald Hoffmann, awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry ( 1981, shared with Kenichi Fukui) and in the UK (with professor Peter P. Edwards at University of Birmingham.
His scientific interests are in materials, inorganic, physical and computational chemistry (particularly for solids) and more recently also organic chemistry. He explores new materials for hydrogen storage, atypical compounds of divalent silver, magnetic materials and compounds of noble gases (particularly the lightest ones).
In this short conversation https://youtu.be/80VeSZee7jo , the professor gave us his point of view on many aspects of scientific work, from the most important social challenges to his impression of the humanist profile of the researcher. Wojciech Grochala is an excellent lecturer, both in the scientific and outreach fields, and a fervent defender of scientific popularization.
