A seminar by Riccardo Rurali, staff scientist and director of the Materials & Simulation Department at the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB), a research institute of the CSIC, will detail the retraction of a scientific paper published in J. Phys. Chem. Lett.. The decision was made after a group at IIT Bombay pointed out reproducibility issues with the results.
Following several weeks of intense testing and double-checks, it was concluded that the original results were flawed, although no misconduct or wrong-doing occurred. This situation has led to the unavoidable decision to retract the paper.
“"If you want to hear an inspiring story (the guys at IIT Bombay worked selflessly just to help us finding what the problem was and we didn't back out when it came to challenge our own results), I’ll tell how it all went down. And also, what did we learn about the retraction process and how is science doing (and how are we doing)"
Rurali, who served as Deputy Director of ICMAB from 2015 to 2023, graduated in Electrical Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano and obtained his PhD in Materials Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with a thesis on the theoretical modeling of defects in SiC. His research career includes a 2-year postdoctoral stay at the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse and Juan de la Cierva and Ramón y Cajal contracts at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research activity has focused on nanoscale thermal transport and the dynamical tuning of materials' thermal conductivity.
The seminar will take place on Monday, 30 November 2026, at 12 PM in the Sala d'Actes Carles Miravitlles and will also be available online upon registration.
