On October 28th and 29th, prof. Dirk Poelman organised the mini-symposium 'Luminescence research across the equator'. This mini-symposium was organized in the framework of a bilateral project between South-Africa and Belgium, jointly funded by the NRF (National Research Foundation – South-Africa) and the FWO (Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders). The project investigates degradation phenomena in phosphors, a subject which is clearly of interest at both the University of the Free State (UFS) and Ghent University (UGent). The symposium was meant as a closing session for the project, summarizing the project achievements and discussing possible future collaborations.
While the discussion on this project is certainly interesting on its own, the scope of the symposium was much broader. In both institutions, UFS and UGent, luminescent materials are being investigated since a long time. Unfortunately, and certainly partly due to the 12 000 km distance between our universities and the lack of funding for joint research, we hardly know what the other ‘party’ is doing.
Therefore, the main aim of this mini-symposium (‘mini’ in terms of duration and number of participants, not in terms of scope or quality) was an occasion to learn from each other’s work, discuss common problems (and solutions) and open up opportunities for collaborations that we probably could not imagine before. The current NRF-FWO project has already led not only to joint publications, but also to a newly started joint PhD, grant proposals and submissions for new collaborative projects. 

Dr. Jonas Joos won the first prize for best oral presentation in a competition for graduates, PhD students and post-docs younger than 30.  His talk on "Evidence for intervalence charge transfer (IVCT) states in Eu doped phosphors" was much appreciated by the judges and audience. The 8th International Workshop on Photoluminescence in Rare Earths: Photonic Materials and Devices was held in Nice on 4-6 September 2019. 

The Nanomaterials issue of August 2019 features LumiLab cover art! Our colleague David Van der Heggen wrote an article on "Optically Stimulated Nanodosimeters with High Storage Capacity", which goes into the details of thermoluminescence (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) properties of β-Na(Gd,Lu)F₄:Tb³⁺ nanophosphors. His graphical abstract was the perfect starting point for a nice cover illustration. The full article can be read here.

Prof. Philippe Smet again appeared on University of Flanders, this time talking about LED screens and their effect on the human mind and body. You can watch his presentation in Dutch.