Category Archives: Panos Kirmizakis

Secondment in Brazil

27th February 2018About Remediate, Panos KirmizakisNick Johnston

Panos Kirmizakis, an ESR at Queen’s University Belfast, travelled with Dr Ulrich Ofterdinger to Sao Paulo for a secondment. Here are his thoughts on what seems like a very valuable experience!

The benefits of an overseas placement are numerous, including the opportunity to travel and develop your career simultaneously. Secondments to participants in our network give us the opportunity to gain skills in techniques and technologies not available to us in our host labs, ensure the multidisciplinary nature of our training, whilst also broadening our outlook and exposing us to other academic and non-academic environments to improve our employability.
I completed my first secondment at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo, one of the leading academic and research centers in Brazil. Professor Carlos Alberto Mendonça kindly gave us the opportunity to connect with USP students working in applied geophysics and participating in the Geophysical Summer School on current topics in groundwater geophysics. The aim of my secondment, in collaboration with USP, was to start a pilot project with the Department of Environmental Engineering at the Piaget de Suzano Faculty. The project that is being developed in Suzano deals with methodologies for remediation of areas contaminated by organic compounds, with risks of contamination of groundwater or of methane generation and escape through soil. Circular experimental cells were installed on campus, with monitoring instrumentation, physical-chemical and biological analyses.

As well as that, Dr Ulrich Ofterndinger and I got the chance to present the REMEDIATE project and spoke with Piaget de Suzano students and professors.

Sao Paulo is incredibly diverse, boasting large communities from Portugal, Italy, Bolivia, and Japan (Sao Paulo has the world’s largest Japanese population outside of Japan) among many others. This makes Sao Paulo feel like dozens of cities rolled into one, meaning there is always something to suit everyone’s tastes. It follows that Sao Paulo would have a diverse and exciting nightlife. The richness of alternative culture in the city is hard to beat anywhere in the world, and one could go out every weekend for months in Sao Paulo without ever doing the same thing twice. Events take place each week that encapsulate different music styles, cultural scenes, themes and settings: there really is something for everyone.

I could not fail to mention the Carnival in Sao Paulo. The city’s Carnival may not have the same reputation as Rio but does know how to throw a party during the Carnival. Big events with samba schools, parties on the streets with many blocos or street parades.

After 30 fruitful days, I headed back towards Belfast, aware of having gained skills for continuing my work and a consolidated friendship with many people there.

ISMET 6 report

23rd October 2017Panos KirmizakisNick Johnston

A report from Panos Kirmizakis, who travelled with other REMEDIATE participants to Lisbon to attend a conference/workshop!

Bio-electrochemical Workshop 2017

This month Peter and I had the opportunity to attend ISMET6, a bio-electrochemical meeting and workshop organized by International Society for Microbial Electrochemistry and Technology which took place in Lisbon, Portugal from the 3^rd to the 6^th of October. I effectively learned in four compressed days what I usually learn in a month. The presenters were able to take the complex and make it simple. I now have a much better understanding of the interactions of microorganisms and electrodes, while finding novel ways to use them for sustainable applications.
ISMET6 covered the whole palette of interest of the community including fundamental aspects of biochemistry, microbiology, and the ecology of relevant organisms and communities, as well as improved materials and designs of devices and their industrial applications. Students had the opportunity to attend a pre-ISMET workshop with teaching sessions delivered by renowned leaders in fundamentals of electrochemical methods, molecular techniques for understanding and engineering electroactive organisms, and electricity driven carbon capture and utilisation.

But even at an international workshop like this, fun wouldn’t be missed. We thank the organizers of the workshop for the social events, the tour of Lisbon and great monuments like the Belem Tower, and the fantastic dinner at Sintra in a friendly atmosphere where we made some new friends.

We look forward to attend the next ISMET workshop, which will take place in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. To learn more about ISMET 2018 and the activities that will take place, visit the central website of EU-ISMET 2018 (https://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/eu-ismet2018/)

Science Uncovered 2017

10th October 2017Panos Kirmizakis, Ricardo Costeira, Tatiana CocervaNick Johnston

The ESRs based at QUB recently attended a public engagement event. Here’s Panos with his thoughts:

Science Uncovered, which has been held in over 300 European cities for many years, took place on Friday September 29th with great success. The venue where European Researchers’ Night 2017 took place – Ulster Museum – was flooded with people; it attracted young and old alike. The audience, with particular love, embraced this multidisciplinary scientific event and listened to a variety of scientific talks, met young researchers, and participated dynamically in this fascinating tour of the world of science, research and technology.

It turns out that science keeps not only the interest of the public but also of the scientists/researchers themselves. The REMEDIATE team was there with Panagiotis, Tatiana, and Ricardo to welcome the public and speak about “Monitoring & clean up of contaminants using natural microbial batteries”, “Bioaccessibility of heavy metals in urban areas” and “Gene sequencing of contaminated groundwater (Do bugs catch colds?)”. We were asked a number of great questions, and enjoyed talking to everyone who came to our stand, as well as meeting other researchers who were at the event.

To learn more about Science Uncovered and the participating research groups, visit the Ulster Museum website

https://www.nmni.com/whats-on/science-uncovered

AquaConSoil 2017

19th September 2017About Remediate, Coren Pulleyblank, Diogo Santos, Neha Mehta, Panos Kirmizakis, Peter Brennan, Ricardo Costeira, Sabrina Cipullo, Seyedmorteza Seyedpour, Stacie Tardif, Tatiana Cocerva, Yi ZhaoNick Johnston

Tatiana Cocerva and a number of the other Remediate ESRs went to ACS2017 this summer. Enjoy her great summary of the events they all enjoyed!

Working hard setting up experiments, getting the expected results, and publishing your work in great journals are all key goals for a researcher; communicating your research at a conference is also a professionally valuable experience.
This year, REMEDIATE participants had the opportunity to attend the AquaConSoil Conference that took place in Lyon, France on the 26^th-30^th June 2017. This event brought together students, scientists, industry professionals, and policy makers from all over the world. Presentations covered the areas of sustainable use and management of soil, sediment, and water resources.

Sabrina, Tatiana, Stacie, Panagiotis, Yi, Morteza, Diogo, and Neha (REMEDIATE Early Stage Researchers) presented their research to a wide audience in a special session “Improved decision making for contaminated land site investigation and risk assessment”, chaired by Professor Frederic Coulon (supervisor at Cranfield University). It was a very interesting session, after which we received valuable feedback and appreciation of our work. Ricardo, Coren, and Peter chose to disseminate their work in a poster session, where they actively engaged with other conference attendees, and exchanged ideas with many of them.

Being a researcher should be challenging and fun
Social events and informal meetings are the best way to create new collaborations and build new friendships. What can be more rewarding than having dinner with your colleagues after a full day of listening to interesting presentations and meeting nice people? The REMEDIATE team added researchers and new friends from Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and Chile to its network.

The conference dinner was organised in a friendly atmosphere where REMEDIATE supervisors and researchers socialised with different conference attendees in a relaxed, informal environment. Tatiana engaged in interesting discussions with the team from BRGM (French geological survey), and found that they shared a similar network and friends in France. What a happy coincidence! After dinner, a DJ boosted everyone’s energy and we all remembered that professional people can combine research and fun.

We are very grateful to all the organisers for this amazing, memorable conference. This was a great experience for all of us and we were inspired, challenged, and more motivated in our work. We look forward to attending the next conference with the same positive mood!

Meet the Researchers – Panos Kirmizakis

20th March 2017About Remediate, Panos KirmizakisNick Johnston

QUB has recruited a new ESR, Panagiotis Kirmizakis (or Panos to people who know him). Here’s more about him in his own words:

Born and raised in Greece. I graduated in Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering in Technological Educational Institute of Crete, in Greece, 2014. After that, I embarked on a MSc programme at the same Institute, graduating in October 2016 with a Master in Geoenvironmental Resources and Risks and a written thesis in Laboratory scale application of Spectral Induced Polarization (SIP) method for environmental monitoring.

After my studies in Greece, I moved to Belfast for the REMEDIATE project. My role in Queen’s University focuses in geophysical approaches in site assessments. I will try through fully controlled laboratory experiments and larger scale applicationσ in contaminated sites the utility of geophysics in environmental monitoring.

I will carry out most of my work at Queen’s University Belfast which is ranked in the top 200 universities in the world according to the 2015-2016 QS World University Rankings. Queen’s is much more than just a place for work as it is located in Northern Ireland; a place is not probably the first destination that someone will think about vacation, but it is worthy to visit. The earth of joyful “ginger-heads”, good drink and the beautiful nature. And if you do not believe me just take a walk along the river, where the eye cannot find the end and the soul rejoices seeing seagulls flying above your heads.