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!
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!
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):
3 positions within the Soft Robotics group in engineering with Prof Jonathan Rossiter, focussing on soft robotic actuation, artificial muscles, smart materials and mechanical metamaterials
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!
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!
Huan’s screen cast! Very nice!Veronica’s poster, also showing the layout of the conference platform with various virtual meeting rooms!
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.