TEDx 2015: Superconducting Seaweed: Adventures in Green Nanotechnology

Location
Great Hall, Aston Webb
Dates
Saturday 21 March 2015 (10:00-16:30)
Zoe Schnepp

Ticket price: £20 (£14 students)

Imagine the word ‘chemistry’ for a moment. You probably have a picture in your mind of someone in a white lab coat and goggles with brightly-coloured solutions bubbling away in front of them. There are almost certainly some toxic signs around! If you visit most chemistry research centres then you will probably see a lot of chemists that fit this picture quite well.

In my lab, however, we have boxes of crab shells, a selection of butterfly wings and various seaweed extracts. When it comes to chemistry, nature has had a 3500000000 year head start! So we have decided to use some of the remarkable chemicals available in nature to make a whole range of nanomaterials.

Speaker Bio: 

 Zoe Schnepp is passionate about Green Chemistry both in her research and the potential for changing negative public perceptions of chemistry. She is from the UK but has also lived and worked in the US, Germany and Japan.

With diverse interests in sustainable materials, nanotechnology and biomass, Zoe leads a growing research group in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham.