The past six months have been some of the busiest in GRAPHERGIA’s journey. Our three demonstration cases moved into piloting, our partners took home two poster awards at Graphene Week 2026, and we shared our research with audiences ranging from secondary-school students to the international 2D-materials community. As we enter our fourth and final year, here is a round-up of what happened between May and October 2026, and what is coming next.
GRAPHERGIA Year 3: Moving Graphene Research Towards Working Energy Demonstrators
Over three years, GRAPHERGIA has developed the building blocks for a new generation of sustainable energy technologies: graphene materials, energy-harvesting devices, flexible electronics and advanced batteries. Year 3 (October 2025 – September 2026) focused on integration, testing, and refinement.
In March 2026, our three demonstration cases entered their piloting phase: smart self-charging textiles, self-powered aerospace sensing and graphene-based batteries for space. Bringing together technologies from eleven partners across Europe, the project is now showing how its research can work beyond individual laboratory components, as complete systems designed for future applications.
Open Doors for Schools: Bringing Advanced Research to Young Students
For the second year running, FORTH/ICE-HT, the GRAPHERGIA coordinator, welcomed local schools through the “Open Doors for Schools” programme, in cooperation with the Secondary Education Authority of Western Greece. Students aged 14–18 discovered research in environmental science, advanced materials, renewable energy and biotechnology, as well as modern scientific instrumentation. Vasilis Dracopoulos (FORTH) hosted the visits and presented the Institute’s activities, including GRAPHERGIA.
This year, 550 students from 12 schools took part, bringing the total to 623 students from 13 schools in the 2024–2025 school year. In total, GRAPHERGIA has now reached 1,173 students from 25 schools, as part of our dissemination and communication strategy.
Inside the GRAPHERGIA Lab: Interviews with our early-career researchers
Early-career researchers are central to GRAPHERGIA, bringing fresh perspectives to the use of graphene for sustainable energy. Our latest interviews feature three young researchers from the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences (FORTH/ICE-HT):
- Evangelia Tsakali, Master’s student in Chemistry.
- Dimitra Markoglou, Chemistry graduate of the University of Patras.
- Markos Anagnostakos, BSc in Materials Science, University of Patras.
Podcast Episode 3: Next-Generation Energy: Batteries for Space Applications and Electric Mobility
In the third episode of our podcast series “The Human Side of Graphene”, host Spyros Yannopoulos (Research Director at FORTH and Coordinator of GRAPHERGIA and INERRANT) is joined by Dorela Hoxha, Materials and Processes Engineer at Pleione Energy (GRAPHERGIA), and Katrien Boonen, PhD student at UJEP (INERRANT).
Together, they discuss the limits of current battery technologies and how graphene-based lithium-ion batteries could improve safety, performance and sustainability in satellites, aircraft and electric vehicles, supporting Europe’s green transition.
FORTH and Adamant Composites Visit ComSensus to Advance Energy Harvesting
From 9 to 12 June 2026, Markos Anagnostakos (FORTH), Ioannis Paraskevopoulos and Spyros Tsiotos (Adamant Composites) visited partner ComSensus in Ljubljana, Slovenia, hosted by R&I Manager Andrej Čampa. The team adapted the measurement setup and custom electronics to new TENG samples and tested several TENG configurations and PCB modifications. Thanks to the modular electronics, different TENG sizes, configurations and movements can now be studied under near-optimal energy-harvesting conditions, laying the groundwork for further measurements and applications.
Spreading the Word: Our 2026 Events Chronicle
Beyond our own webinars, we share our results with the graphene and 2D-materials community at European and international events. The highlight of the year was Graphene Week 2026, Europe’s leading 2D-materials event, organised by the Graphene Flagship. From 21 to 25 September, six GRAPHERGIA partners joined 448 delegates from 40 countries in Porto, where we:
- delivered an oral presentation on flexible, printed and wearable electronics;
- presented three posters, two of which won awards;
- co-organised a workshop with the ARMS project on graphene technologies for smart textiles, wearable electronics and supercapacitors;
- pitched our demonstration cases.
PRESS RELEASE ABOUT THE TWO POSTER AWARDS AT GRAPHENE WEEK 2026
Partners from Adamant Composites and FORTH/ICE-HT each took home a poster award. Spyros Tsiotos (Adamant Composites) won first prize in the “Manufacturing, Composites & Scale-Up” category for his poster on graphene-based TENGs in aerospace structures for real-time mechanical monitoring. Markos Anagnostakos and Spyros Yannopoulos (FORTH/ICE-HT) received the “Best Poster Sustainable Use of Graphene” award for their work on laser-assisted graphene-on-textile electrodes for energy harvesting and micro-flexible energy storage.
Since May 2026, we have also taken part in five other events:
- E-MRS Spring Meeting 2026 – June, Strasbourg, France
- 22nd European Conference on Composite Materials (ECCM22) – July, Oslo, Norway
- 22nd International Symposium on the Physics of Semiconductors and Applications (ISPSA 2026) – July, Jeju Island, South Korea
- 90th Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) – September, Thessaloniki, Greece
- European Researchers’ Night 2026 – October, Patras, Greece
Upcoming Events
- Faraday Discussion on 2-4 November in London, UK
The Graphene EU Community: Collaboration is Key
Collaboration has been one of our mottos since GRAPHERGIA began. Over the past six months, it has meant sharing the stage with fellow European projects: recording a podcast with INERRANT, co-organising a Graphene Week workshop with ARMS, and preparing our next webinar with e-Flower and STAND.
GRAPHERGIA is also one of the 14 innovation projects featured in the Graphene Flagship Annual Report 2025, which follows how these projects are taking graphene from laboratory research towards pilot-scale and industrial use. Our section covers the projects’ 2025 research, communication and exploitation activities 👉 READ THE GRAPHENE FLAGSHIP ANNUAL REPORT 2025
Collaboration also means listening. Our Social Life Cycle Assessment survey invites researchers, industry professionals, and workers in 2D advanced materials, batteries, e-textiles, and connected sensors to share their views on working conditions, corporate social responsibility, and ethical value chains. Your answers will feed into our Final Social Assessment report.
You can find all our other publications on the GRAPHERGIA Hub Resources page.
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This newsletter was originally published on LinkedIn.