In the field of Materials Science and Engineering, the Vinci ROLOAD Interdisciplinary, International, Silesian Summer School 2026 will give participants an opportunity to dive into the world of materials. They will find out where, why, and how materials work. The students will be provided with basic knowledge of materials (metals, polymers, ceramics), their structures, properties, and materials testing methods. They will also learn how the properties of materials can be tailored by selecting their phase and chemical composition or through heat and plastic treatment. They will learn how to obtain modern porous materials for implantology and make such material with one of the research groups. Some students, during their workshops, will even produce a high-entropy alloy (HEA) using arc melting methods. Most importantly, the basic and advanced techniques of testing materials will be demonstrated during Vinci Summer School, such as electron microscopy, X-ray, and spectroscopic methods. What is more, participants will be able to conduct research themselves using the high-tech equipment available at our Institute of Materials Engineering.
The school’s program includes classes in English with the following elements:
basic lecture interdisciplinary lecture online lectures specialist workshops
Basic lecture (15 hours + 15 hours of self-work)
A summer school student is required to attend all lectures in his or her primary discipline.
- Electron microscopy as a tool for studying the structure of materials
- Analysis of the disordered structure of materials on the basis on the X-ray electron diffraction
- Biomaterials based on titanium alloys – production and modification
- Wrap your head around polymers
- X-ray methods of material testing
Interdisciplinary lecture (3 hours + 3 hours of self-work)
Material secrets - can silly questions lead to brilliant answers? - Sylwia Golba, PhD, Eng. Assoc. Prof. and Magdalena Szklarska, PhD
One plus one makes two. And when something falls, it breaks. But does it always? Do you ever find yourself questioning the unquestionable? Wondering (even quietly) if it really makes sense? Sometimes you just want to do it your way and see what happens if... So we'll do it our way. We'll ask plenty of less-than-serious and more-than-serious questions. And we'll see if it actually... works. Maybe in a "stupid" question there's a seed of wisdom? Come and find out. Because in materials engineering, that's exactly how discoveries begin -- when we test what "everyone knows," look closer at cracks, strengths, and surprises hidden in matter itself. Sometimes it's the unexpected question that leads to a new material, a better design, or a smarter solution.
We strongly recommend the participants attend all interdisciplinary lectures listed below across all four additional disciplines. It will be recognised with an extra certificate corresponding to 1 ECTS credit
An analytical chemist serving as a forensic expert is responsible for the reliable examination of evidence using advanced instrumental analytical methods. Their role involves not only the identification and comparison of trace materials or chemical substances, but also the proper interpretation of results in the context of the forensic question, taking into account measurement uncertainty and methodological limitations. The expert’s opinion becomes a key component in the decision-making process of law enforcement and the judicial system. During the lecture, students will become familiar with: the basic concepts and objectives of applying instrumental analytical methods in physicochemical forensic examinations; instrumental analytical methods used in forensic laboratories for the analysis of evidential samples, with particular emphasis on the problem of trace evidence analysis, by a) scanning electron microscopy coupled with X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), b) X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF, µ-XRF), c) microspectrophotometry in the UV-VIS range (MSP), d) infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), e) Raman spectroscopy, f) chromatographic methods; the fundamental issues related to the interpretation of the evidential value of various types of data obtained in forensic laboratories, with particular emphasis on the likelihood ratio test.
As part of the first 3h block, the basic concepts of data mining will be introduced to students. Various data mining tasks will be highlighted and characterized. The Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP) scheme will be presented. Issues related to data preprocessing will be discussed. Finally, methods for assessing the quality of data mining models will be presented.
The lecture focuses on modern cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) techniques, with particular emphasis on sample preparation methods. It discusses key freezing strategies such as plunge freezing, high-pressure freezing, and slam freezing, along with approaches to fixation and rapid flash freezing of biological material. The lecture explains the importance of vitrification in protecting samples from electron beam damage and outlines the principles of low-dose microscopy. It also introduces the fundamentals of cryo-TEM tomography and the process of 3D reconstruction from tilt-series images. Overall, the session provides a comprehensive overview of techniques that enable high-resolution structural analysis while preserving the native state of specimens.
What is medical physics? What are the responsibilities of a medical physicist in therapy and medical imaging diagnostics? A brief description of selected diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. What is the future of medical physics? The lecture will include demonstrations utilizing selected medical devices. The lecture will presents the latest trends in the study of potential anticancer drugs. The topic of stages of research on new drugs will be discussed, with emphasis on the problem of in vivo testing. Moreover, the basic methods of toxicity testing of new substances and methods of verification of the obtained results will be presented. In the next part, other more advanced techniques (such as Western Blot, flow cytometry, PCR) allowing to determine the mechanism of anticancer activity will be presented. This will be followed by a discussion of the problems of selectivity of cytostatics to healthy tissue and methods to improve these parameters.
Online lecture (4 hours + 4 hours of self-work)
The lecture titled "From crystal structure to functional behavior: the physics of Shape Memory Alloys" will be delivered by a world-renowned expert professor Rubén Santamarta Martínez from University of the Balearic Islands.
Specialist workshops (30 hours + 30 hours of self-work + 10 hours to prepar a presentation for a closing seminar)
Workshops for research teams. Each candidate will declare their readiness to cooperate with a given research team at the recruitment stage, selecting the appropriate topic. These will be stationary classes carried out in modern research laboratories.
- Preparation and chracterization of selected high-entropy alloy
- Using microscopic methods to analyze the materials structures
- Powder metallurgy and modification of titanium-based materials
- In search of ideal polymer material
- Density Functional Theory in practice - ab initio calculations in solid-state physics
- Fabrication and characterization of magnetic shape memory alloys
- Advanced biomaterials lab: modifying and characterizing titanium surfaces
