Mapping research at QCAM: a journey through materials science

The QCAM website now boasts a brand new page showcasing research at QCAM. Its key feature is a visual overview of QCAM’s research themes. Matteo Duca, QCAM development and scientific affairs director, shares insights into the design of this scheme.
‘Maps have always fascinated me. When I set to work on a scheme of QCAM’s research themes, my main goal was to come up with an informative and visually appealing design. I quickly realised that a kind of a “mind map” was the way to go. But there was also a sense of movement associated with the idea of “exploring” our research themes. It was then that I decided to create a scheme drawing on the finest examples of public transport maps, for instance London’s Tube map. There was one major challenge, though: QCAM research themes are highly interdisciplinary, while metro lines tend to intersect only at a few points. Luckily, the solution was literally under my nose, on the Tube map I’d drawn the initial inspiration from. In the central part of London’s network, some lines run parallel and appear to wrap around each other – actually, there’s indeed a Circle line! This layout, resembling a spiral, also lent itself perfectly to conveying the idea of core, fundamental research themes (polymers, nanoscience and self-assembly) feeding into applications (biomedical, energy and sustainable development). And that’s how the QCAM “research map” came to be!’