Serbia and France have fostered a productive 20-year partnership in science and education that stands as testament to the esteemed Pavle Savić Scientific Bilateral Cooperation. However, Vinča Institute researchers have enjoyed this kind of connection with French scientific centres for much longer. We were recently reminded of this connection by the film Guardians of the Formula.
The story of the collaboration between the Vinča Institute’s Centre of Excellence for Hydrogen and Renewable Energy (CONVINCE) and the Neel Institute in Grenoble began back in 2011, at the meeting of the COST Action “Nanostructured materials for solid-state hydrogen storage.” At that meeting, Dr. Daniel Fruchart, director emeritus of CNRS, said that his work on materials for hydrogen storage was inspired by the work of the Group from Vinča Institute. Of course, I was proud of my group and our accomplishments, so from that moment on we launched long-running cooperation that became a long-lasting friendship. We established our first bilateral project in 2016, with the main goal of producing solid-state storage material.
After that, through the High-Level Scientific Stays programme, our young colleague obtained the scholarship in 2019 and had the opportunity to visit CNRS Institute Néel in Grenoble and receive training in state-of-the-art technologies for solid-state hydrogen storage. Over the course of the last 10 years, we have organised several conferences and workshops that have included the participation of the Neel Institute, Centrale Supélec, University Paris-Saclay, CNRS. Finally, last year, researchers from CONVINCE established cooperation with French company Jomi Leman, which deals with hydrogen storage. We have come a long way since 2011; from science to innovation for scientific collaboration, to cooperation with a company. And our cooperation has developed into a great friendship. We expect this cooperation in the field of innovative technologies for hydrogen storage to pave the way for new HORIZON Europe projects, in addition to increasing the visibility of both institutions.