The project partners in front of the building with the teaching rooms of the ISSP (Photo: Ainars Knoks 2019)

The Month-18 CO2EXIDE project partner meeting took place on the 17th and 18th of June in Riga. The historic Baltic city at summer solstice formed a dreamlike setting for the meeting which was excellently hosted by the Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP), University of Latvia. After a comprehensive exchange on the current project status the partners took the opportunity to tour the facility and review demonstrations of the current research activities carried out by the ISSP. They were impressed by the high technical and academic standard provided at the institute.

Founded in 1978, the ISSP might seem quite young, but it is still one of the leading research institutions within the fields of material sciences in the Baltic States. It offers ambitious developments in the scientific arena and advancements in the industrial applications for a growing, increasingly international number of teachers and students. Riga is one of the closest capitals to Stockholm and Helsinki on the European mainland, it is therefore an important nodal point with many ongoing cooperations on the axis that connects Scandinavia with Central Europe. The conference on functional materials and nanotechnologies (FM&NT) benefits from this conditions. Organized by the ISSP since 2006, the FM&NT has gained widespread popularity among the international research community. Last year’s conference hosted over 180 scientists from more than 20 different countries. The next FM&NT will be held at the beginning of May 2020 in Viļnius, Lithuania.

Within the project CO2EXIDE, the ISSP is dealing with the catalytic coatings and the membrane of the cell in which the electrochemical transformation of CO2 and water takes place. It thereby works in close cooperation with Schaeffler Technologies and its subsidiary Schaeffler Baltic. 22 people organised in three groups are involved in the research for the H2020 project. Some of them are introduced in the CO2EXIDE project partner film featuring the institute. It can be viewed at the CO2EXIDE YouTube channel and at the project website. The ISSP film is the first in a series of partner interviews that will successively be published online. The idea of this series is to create more visibility for the people and the organisations behind the research.