Students at the centre of international ionic liquids workshop

Chief Investigator Prof. Doug MacFarlane represented ACES at an international ionic liquids workshop hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center for Ionic Liquids (Cilis) in Chile last month.

The workshop attracted experts working in the field from around the world.

Doug said the event was a win for the participating students.

“Meetings like this are particularly important for the students,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for them to meet senior people in their field, talk to them and discuss their work with them.”

“I’m always happy to spend time with students because they are the future leaders of their field.”

Doug said Cilis and ACES have a lot of common research interests and directions, which could lead to exchange opportunities for each organisation’s students in the future.

“What I’ve seen of the work going on at Cilis—there’s a lot of very interesting chemistry being done and I think it’s going to have an international impact,” he said.

“Our focus at ACES is mostly on the electrochemical application of ionic liquids. The fact that they are such terrific electrolytes for any electrochemical application is very attractive to us, and it allows us to think about batteries, water splitting and other kinds of energy storage technologies.”

“There’s potential for our two centres to connect and allow students to travel back and forth,” he said.

The audience was made up of some 100 researchers, mostly students from various parts of Chile.