As you may already know, the United Nations declated 2011 the International Year of Chemistry. This celebration aims at improving the public appreciation of chemistry, as well as encourage the interest in this science and generate enthusiasm about its creative future. At the University of Girona, some of my collegues (Miquel Duran, Silvia Simon, Pep Anton Vieta or Laia Guillaumes) have been actively involved in communicating chemistry to the society for a long time. Thus, the IYC2011 was a splendind opportunity to continue this endeavour. Among other activities, they convinced me and other collegues from the IQC to collaborate in the CatQuimicat.cat blog, aimed at popularizing chemistry in Catalonia during the IYC2011. So far this initiative has been very succesfull, being recommened for instance in the main catalan TV channel.
One of my posts in the blog was aimed at introducing the concept of artificial photosynthesis. To my surprise, after this post I received a phone call from Laia Banús, editor of the journal Interempresas Energías Renovables, a spanish journal on renewable energy sources aimed at an industry and business audience. After reading my post on the blog, they encouraged me to collaborate with their publication in order to give some insights on the present and future of artificial photosynthesis-based technologies (you can check my contribution here). This example nicely illustrates how a blog like CatQuimica.cat can help popularizing research done at universities among the general public.
