09 December 2024

We are happy to announce a Special Session entitled “Radiation safety in buildings” at RAP 2025 Conference.

The primary factors of radiation risk are homes and workplaces, as people spend 80-90% of their time indoors. Inside buildings, internal exposure (to radon) and external exposure (to gamma radiation emitted by building materials) are usually higher (and sometimes significantly higher) than outdoors. This risk can be regulated and should be reduced by fundamental guidelines issued by authoritative international organizations such as the IAEA, ICRP, WHO, and the Euratom Community (EU-BSS).

The session will address good regulatory practices and highlight several gaps and challenges within European and international regulatory systems. It will focus on mitigating risks for both workers and the public, developing novel measurement techniques for indoor radon/thoron and NORM in building materials, and standardizing existing methods. This includes analyzing the variability of measurement results, assessing conformity with normative levels, and refining decision-making procedures. Participation from PhD students, researchers, inspectors, regulators, and mitigation experts is highly welcomed.

Chairperson: Prof. Konstantin Kovler, National Building Research Institute, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

29 November 2024

We are happy to announce a Special Session entitled “Soft-matter lithography and nanofabrication with ionizing radiation” at RAP 2025 Conference.

Electron irradiation became an important and versatile tool for soft-matter lithography and nanofabrication. Dedicated molecular design and precise adjustment of irradiation dose and electron energy give broad flexibility in the character of the fabricated patterns and nanoobjects. Along with conventional lithographic patterns, complex chemical, morphological, and biological patterns can be created with high precision. Functional, free-standing carbon nanomembranes with adjustable parameters, such as thickness, porosity, and specific chemical character, can be fabricated. Complex 3D nanopatterning can be performed by focused electron beam-induced deposition (FEBID), relying on electron-induced dissociation and deposition of the precursor molecules. The above approaches rely on the understanding of the relevant electron-induced processes which requires their fundamental studies for model and real systems.

In this special session, recent advancements in the understanding of irradiation-induced processes in relation to molecules and soft-matter templates and the respective lithography and nanofabrication techniques will be presented.

Chairperson: Prof. Michael Zharnikov, Applied Physical Chemistry, Heidelberg University, Germany

We are happy to announce a Special Session entitled “Physicochemical processes involved in the DNA/RNA-radiation interaction” at RAP 2025 Conference.

Various types of radiation (UV, X-rays, gamma rays, ion beams,…) are known to interact with DNA/RNA, ultimately leading to mutations or cell death. The interaction may be direct, giving rise to electronic excitation or ionization of the nucleic acids, or indirect. In the latter case, the primary target is the environmental water or other endogenic or exogenic molecules present in the cell. Subsequently, the produced chemical species attack the nucleic acids. Considerable effort is dedicated to the understanding of the physicochemical mechanisms involved in these processes. The information derived from their characterization may contribute to the application of appropriate protection methods, the development of improved therapeutical procedures, as well as to the design of DNA/RNA-based biosensors using optoelectronic signals.

The session will focus on recent advances associated with the physical and chemical processes, preceding the biological effects. They include time-resolved studies aiming at the characterization of transient species (excited states, radicals, reaction intermediates…), and that of the final reaction products. In addition to the experimental studies, theoretical aspects will be discussed.

Chairperson: Prof. Dimitra Markovitsi, Institute of Physical Chemistry, CNRS-Université Paris Saclay, France

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

After a successful RAP 2024 conference , held in Granada, Spain, we are moving to an exciting Greek island of Crete. Namely, RAP 2025 will be held from 26-30 May 2025 at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) in Gournes, near Crete capital of Heraklion.

RAP 2025 will be a hybrid conference with full interaction between onsite and online participants. Conference publications are Book of Abstracts and Conference Proceedings. In addition, as usual, we are in talks with scientific journals regarding publishing of a special issue with full papers from the conference.

Greece’s largest island, Crete is the do-it-all destination of the Aegean. People come to Crete for the obvious: beaches, and the resorts that sit on them. But much more than that, Crete ticks many other boxes that make it an immersive European island getaway. For one, there’s incredible history here thanks to the millennia of civilizations—from the ancient Minoans to the Venetians, Ottomans, and everything in between.

We kindly invite you to submit your contribution(s) to RAP 2025. The deadline for submission of one page abstracts is 28 February 2025, and the deadline for full papers for the Proceedings/journal is 31 July/31 August 2025. Note that the registration fees (except the one for virtual offline participation) cover both publication of the abstract and submission of full paper in Proceedings or journal.

Please visit our website and follow us on Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram for updates. We would be grateful if you could spread a word about the conference within your research network.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at any time with your questions or suggestions.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at RAP 2025.

Conference Chairpersons