Guided by the CORENET coordinator Prof. Andres de la Escosura, from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) an introduction of the main challenges of the project was provided. Shortly after, the floor was given to Prof. Wilhelm Huck, from Radboud Universiteit (SRU), who provided an introduction to reservoir computing through a presentation titled ‘Reservoir computing using chemical reaction networks‘.  

Following this, Dr. Emanuel Lörtscher from IBM Research Europe – Zurich (IBM), showcased a super interesting story about CMOS compatible microfluidics with relevance to automated laboratories. Finally, giving way to the guest speaker Klas Hjort, Professor in Materials Science and Head of the Microsystems Technology (MST) program at Uppsala University who presented what they are working on at the Division of Microsystems Technology in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, concerning microfluidics at high pressure, and how it can be combined with CMOS technology.

To foster the knowledge exchange between the audience and the speakers, a dedicated Q&A session with valuable interactions reached to address the current chances of microfluidics, such as: how to integrate chemical analysis of complex mixtures with flow chemistry, what inline analytical tools can be used to probe chemical reaction networks inside flow reactors, about the logistics of using chemical reaction networks to do classification, how much complexity does there need to be for successful mapping of the chemical reservoir computer to a natural chemical reaction network, what can flow chemistry do better than badge or CSTRs, and how is it applicable to CRNs and beyond.

The session ended with great talks and very challenging questions from the audience. Did you miss the event or want to know more than these  takeaways from the webinar? Below you can watch the introduction of the webinar from CORENET project coordinator.

Microfluidics applied to the study of CRNs has been the first one of our series of webinars. Now is time to focus on the next #CORENEThour webinar topic, what about another one on reservoir computing? In the meantime, stay tuned as new insights from the speakers will be shared soon!