Great to have prof Sen (Department of Chemistry, Penn State Univ) giving a zoom seminar as part of our “Functional Molecules and Materials” research theme at the School of Chemistry.
Fascinating results as presented in his talk entitle “Fantastic Voyage: Designing Self-Powered Nanobots”!
A review just appeared in Nano Energy with our collaborators from the National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, Bejing. The review, entitled “Conjugated microporous polymers for energy storage: Recent progress and challenges” covers the very broad and active field of energy storage, specficially highlighting challenges and opportunities.
Congrats to Kamran and all others involved in another paper in this growing collaboration!
Henry very succesfully defended his thesis last week – with Prof Dwight Seferos (Univ of Toronto) as the external examiner, Dr Pierangelo Gobbo as internal, and Prof Simon Hall as independent chair!
Not quite the same as an in-person celebration afterwards, but we could celebrate on Zoom, and made sure that Henry was made aware of his own personal bottle of bubbly for celebrations!
Well done Henry!
The School of Chemistry has just started to advertise for a new teaching-only lectureship (initial 3-year fixed term position). The full advert and detailed job description can be found here.
This is an exciting new development, and provides an opportunity to join one of the top chemistry schools in the UK. Recent rankings placed the School of Chemistry 3rd in the UK for chemistry research (Times Good University Guide 2021, £), and 5th in the UK for chemistry teaching (Guardian University Guide 2021).
Rather late than never – congratulations are in order to both Robert and Xue who successfully passed their MSc (Research) vivas at the end of 2020! Robert has now joined the group of Jean Hubert Oliver at the University of Florida as PhD student, and Xue secured a prestigious China Scholarship Council studentship to continue in the FRG with her PhD.
Thanks also to Pol Besenius from Mainz (Robert’s external examiner) and Emily Draper from Glasgow (Xue’s external).
Not sure how we missed making these important events known to the world – sincere apologies! Well done to both!
As part of the £6M newly EPSRC-funded project “emPOWER: in-body artificial muscles for physical augmentation, function restoration, patient empowerment and future healthcare”, we are excited to advertise a research associate/senior research associate position within the Faul Research Group, with a focus on conjugated and block copolymer synthesis for implantable artificial muscles. This position will be available for up to 5 years.
Please note that the closing date for applications is the 28th of February.
In addition to this exciting opportunity to join the FRG, there are a further 4 positions in the emPOWER project available in Bristol (also for up to 5 years):
Great to formally welcome new PhD students Ciqun and Helal in the group!
Ciqun joined the Soft Robotics lab and the FRG as a joint PhD student at the end of last year, working on novel soft actuators for robotics applications. Helal joined the group very recently from Saudi Arabia, and will be working on novel perylene-based supramolecular polymers!
Welcome to both!
GWPore – the local GW4 network for porous materials activities at the univerisities of Cardiff, Bath, Exeter and Bristol – has had an excitiing online conference, focussed on giving early career research the opportunity to present posters and oral presentations.
A number of FRG group members attended and gave posters (Julia, Connie, Merve, Safa). There were also two talks from the group (Neha and Veronica), as well as a talk by our colleague and close collaborator Kamran (from the Beijing)!
Fantastic effort by all, and a great opportunity to network and see what other exciting porous materials research is currently being performed in the South West of the UK and beyond!
Huan and Veronica recently joined the RSC Materials Chemistry Division poster symposium. This was a virtual conference, and held on the RSC’s conference platform.
Attendees had to create a one-minute flash presentation, as well as a full poster! Both Huan and Veronica did a great job, and engaged with this new platform – congratulations!
After a very unusual year, a fun online Christmas party with some great prizes (cleaning someone else’s FH, changing the base bath, to mention some of the more interesting prizes!), we all retreated for a quiet, peaceful and restful Christmas.
So, 2021 started with another lockdown, but we are grateful for testing faciltiies and the opportunity to be back in the lab.
Wishing all a safe and healthy 2021!
