As usual, BSIRG organised a small Christmas lunch to join everybody and have a relaxed get-together. The BSIRG group wishes all a happy and safe season!

As in previous editions, BSIRG participated in the European Researchers Night (NEI) 2021 activities. This year, our participation was split between Lisbon (Museu de História Natural) and Oeiras (Marina de Oeiras). In Lisbon we presented the activity "Absorption and emission: From solar radiation to luminescence". The importance and dangers of the greenhouse effect were explained and related to absorption of solar radiation. Also, different experiments were presented to kids and their parents, focused in the properties of light and its interaction with day life materials (fluorescence and phosphorescence). In Oeiras we presented CHEMTOUCH, a new software to teach organic chemistry using virtual reality, developed at IST in a collaboration between the departments of Informatics (Rui Prada and Daniel Simões), Chemical Engineering (Dulce Simão) and Bioengineering (Vasco Bonifácio, BSIRG). Gonçalo Gaspar and João Lopes (IST MSc Students and CHEMTOUCH game developers), helped the young visitors to have fun testing the software, and with great success! CHEMTOUCH will be soon available to IST students in the organic chemistry classes.

Bruno Pedras is the new editor of Springer Series on Fluorescence, a collection of books that aims at drawing together both papers on fundamental research including recent advances in fluorescence methods and techniques as well those on practice-oriented research and pioneering applications. In a recent interview, Bruno Pedras shares his insights on how research work done on fluorescence can help achieve alternative and sustainable energy and discusses the most recently published book in the series Fluorescence in Industry.

This week, the BSIRG seminars had Dr. Georgi Georgiev (BSIRG visiting scientist) and Prof. Mário N. Berberan e Santos as invited speakers. Dr. Georgiev is a researcher at Biointerfaces and Biomaterials Laboratory, Department of Optics and Spectroscopy, School of Optometry, Faculty of Physics, St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. His lecture was entitled "Ocular Biointerfaces: From Surface Chemistry To Clinical Application". Prof. Berberan-Santos gave the lecture "Homo-FRET in cyclic molecular and supramolecular systems".

Mário Berberan-Santos is the recipient of the Ferreira da Silva Prize 2020. The prize is awarded biannually by the Portuguese Chemical Society to a chemist that gave a very important contribution to the advance of chemistry in Portugal. This prize, awarded since 1982, is the most import in the field of chemistry in Portugal. Ferreira da Silva (1853-1923), an outstanding portuguese chemist and university professor, was also the first president of the Portuguese Chemical Society.

A new cycle of BSIRG seminars started today, under the organisation of Sandra Pinto. The seminars will take place via zoom meeting every two weeks at 1 pm. The first speakers were Clara Díaz, with the lecture "Developing a dual homo-FRET reporter for the crosstalk between the two gates of a potassium ion channel" and Nuno Martinho, with the lecture "Urelockers: Novel dendrimer-based therapeutics".

iBB is now part of i4HB - Institute for Health and Bioeconomy, an Associated Laboratory (LA) that has just been granted the by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
i4HB is a strategic partnership between three leading research units that thrive on fundamental and applied science in the Biomolecular Sciences, Biotechnology, Bioengineering and Micro- and Nanotechnology fields: iBB - Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IST, University of Lisbon), UCIBIO - Applied Biomolecular Sciences Unit (NOVA University of Lisbon and University of Porto), and INESC-MN (Institute for System Engineering and Computers - Microsystems and Nanotechnologies - a nonprofit research and development Institute).

Two BSIRG researchers, Mário Berberan-Santos and Carina Crucho, are among the most cited top scientists at the top 2% of their areas (ca. 100,000 worldwide, out of more than 6,000,000 scientists worldwide). The rankings are based upon a researcher's citations for both a single year (2017) and cumulative across their careers. Portugal is represented in these lists compiled by Stanford University (published Oct. 2020) with 385 scientists (career list) and 552 scientists (single-year list). Titled Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators, the lists use algorithms that quantify and systematically rank individuals into consistent scientific fields. The scores are provided with and without self-citations to lessen the impact of self-citations or the use of citation farms (small clusters of researchers massively citing each other's work). Ranked within the careerlong citation impact list is Mario Berberan-Santos (top 1%), also along with Carina Crucho (top 2%) in the single-year citations list.