Teaching
Teaching, outreach and mentoring |
As a CNRS Research Director, I do not teach per se, and this frees up time to develop research methodology and mentor our fellows. The lectures that I do give are aimed at Master level or above, and in this role I have been visiting a visiting Professor outside France in places including the University of San Luis (Argentina) in December 2013. However, I do participate in yearly CNRS-Formation courses aimed at laboratory technicians and engineers which explains the essential theory and applications required to use commercial adsorption equipment dealing for the characterization of solids (CNRS Formation web site). This course is organized by Isabelle BEURROIES (isabelle.beurroies(at)univ-amu.fr). I concentrate on the aspects dealing with the characterization of microporosity and equally give lectures dealing with the use of adsorption at room temperature and adsorption of mixtures.
Outreach Activities Taking our research to the classroom and to the public in general is a particular interest of mine. It can involve some intellectual gymnastics to explain some of our research at these various levels, but this activity is often quite rewarding. I thus give lectures and/or demonstrations to various audiences several times per year. Some examples include:
Mentoring Much of my research activity is carried out with home built automated experiments and are thus not labour intensive. I also privilege collaboration with experts in materials synthesis and molecular modeling with the strategy to optimize discovery. These points and the fact that my group of permanent staff and l still carry out some experiments mean that we concentrate on the quality mentoring of a limited number of early stage research fellows. The aim of this is to give our students facile access to PI's who have an ongoing felling for the experiments, full access to the apparatus required to carry out their research, the possibility of quality collaborations with who I consider world leaders in their respective fields... This thus opens the possibility to carry out innovative research, high-quality publications and overall provide the tools and experience which act as the best springboard to attaining their potential when they move onwards. Below are listed some of my recent colleagues, their topics, a relevant publication or two and their position now.
We regularly host research colleagues from outside the group for short periods. These have included: Eder Amayuelas (Bilbao - Spain), Christopher Norton (Bochum - Germany), Wahid Jeridi (Gabes - Tunisia), Redouane Melouki (Alger - Algeria), Jhonny Villarroel (San Luis - Argentina), Debora Maia (San Luis - Argentina). |