First Web Seminar at Makerere University

The first-ever SciBridge web seminar was held earlier today at Makerere University!  The web seminar was given by Nella Vargas-Barbosa of Penn State University and Joint U.S.-Africa Materials Initiative alum.  The web seminar was attended by the students who did the solar cell experiment just last week, and they were organized by John Paul Eneku (SciBridge Vice-Chair) and Alex Okello of the Physics Department at Makerere University.

John Paul writes:
"Indeed we have just had the first SciBridge web-based seminar (Alex, I and our students) with our wonderful researcher being Nella Vargas-Barbosa who was online live from U.S.A. It was great, very educative, informative and has inspired the students. The excitement is huge among the students because they have learnt much more about a dye sensitized solar cell, which they ably fabricated a couple of days ago. More so they were able to ask more burning questions and got satisfying responses. Their passion for dye sensitized solar cells has just gotten higher and are desperate to do something to contribute to the global course of solar cell research. As a starting point they will be taking the solar cell activity to the public through exhibition of their recently fabricated dye sensitized solar cells on world science day celebrations coming up on Monday 10 November which is supported by UNESCO and hosted by Makerere University. Later on (in the forthcoming academic semester, February 2015) they will take on individual research projects to explore the potential within a range of our local dyes. We consider this project activity a special gift to us because many students elsewhere deserve the same and yet there is no opportunity for them. We, the instructors and our students, would like to sincerely thank very much our research expert (Nella Vargas-Barbosa) for educating and supporting us; the SciBridge Chair and U.S Organizer (Veronica Augustyn) for thinking about us so passionately and mobilizing all the required resources and delivering them in time; the volunteers in U.S who unconditionally responded to Veronica’s call during resources mobilization; the U.S universities involved especially UCLA and University of Texas at Austin for all the logistical support and Makerere University (Dept. of Physics) for accepting and supporting SciBridge and above all, the SciBridge collaboration for the wonderful opportunity. We will forever be grateful. We will support, promote and stay committed to Scibridge and its activities at all times."

Check out the photos from the event below!