Charl had the pleasure of visiting Kazakhstan for the first time – joining the 5th International Symposium on Emerging Materials and Devices, hosted by the Renewable Energy Lab at National Laboratory Astana, Nazarbayev University.

It was a pleasure to visit – not only the honour to be asked to give the opening plenary, but to experience the warmth and hospitality of many colleagues in Astana (including the kind hosting Dr Bakhytzhan Baptayev and Prof. Nurxat Nuraje). In addition, former Masters’ student, Dauren (now doing a PhD in Kazakhstan), travelled from Almaty to join the conference as well!

And, to top it off, Charl had the pleasure to meet with a Bristol alumna, Professor Siti Fairus, from UKM Malaysia. Not only did Siti do her PhD at the School of Chemistry (with the late Prof. Ian Manners), but Charl was her internal examiner for her PhD! What a joy!

Those who were in Chengdu headed to Shanghai, very kindly hosted by Donghua University’s “State Key Laboratory for Functional Polymer Fibers” and Shanghai Jiaotong University’s “Department of Chemistry”. It was not only great to spend time with Bristol Alumni (Yaozu Liao and Wei Lyu at DHU, and Hongjing Dou and Huibin Qiu at SJTU), but also share science and interact with many students!

Thanks also to DHU for generous sponsorship of prizes – with a first prize by Jerry, and a second prize to Liang! Well done!

Several members of the group travelled to China to attend the
8th International Symposium Frontiers in Polymer Science. It was an opportunity to showcase work from across the group, present, interact – and meet with old friends (including Prof ZHANG Xi, long-time friend and collaborator, and president of Jilin University!).

In addition – Junru won a prize for best poster presentation! Congratulations!

Great to start the year in Bristol on a high note – two days of exciting soft robotics research and discussions at the “Transforming Healthcare with Soft Robotics 2026”! Great opportunity to engage with scientists, engineers and clinicians!