MARVEL co-sponsored the AMRS 2024 Conference in Kigali

From 16 to 19 December, the 12th International Conference of the African Materials Research Society (AMRS2024) gathered hundreds of materials science experts from around the world in Kigali, Rwanda. The conference, which was sponsored by NCCR MARVEL along with several other scientific institutions, was focussed on 10 key themes: 1. Biomaterials & Materials for health 2. Materials for agriculture 3. Materials for energy 4. Materials for construction 5. Nanotechnology 6. Materials for environment, water and sanitation 7. Materials for mining and minerals processing 8. Advanced materials 9. Materials for sustainable electronics 10. Materials for Manufacturing.

MARVEL Director Nicola Marzari was among the plenary speakers, and on 16 December gave a talk on “The Shape of Things to Come: Computational Science Driving Scientific Discovery and Technological Innovation”. On the same day, CECAM deputy director Sara Bonella chaired a session on Advanced Materials.

Here are some photos from Marzari’s talk, and from a panel on "Advancing gender equity in African research" that concluded the first day of the conference.

The AMRS was formed in August 2000 through a US-Africa Materials Workshop which was held in Pretoria, South Africa. The workshop was co-organized and sponsored by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) and the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). This workshop sought to explore opportunities for collaboration between USA and Africa with an overarching objective of developing materials research capacity in Africa. Two years later, on 12th December, 2002, the African-MRS was officially launched in Dakar, Senegal in the 1st AMRS International Conference were various world leading experts in the different facets of Materials Science, Engineering and Research were present. Subsequent biennial International Conferences have been held in South Africa (2003), Morocco (2005), Tanzania (2007), Nigeria (2009), Zimbabwe, (2011), Ethiopia (2013), Ghana (2015), Botswana (2017), Tanzania (2019), Senegal (2022).