The FRG took the opportunity to volunteer and help out at the Bristol International Student Centre (BISC) last night. We helped to cook welcome meals for new international students, and as it was the last night of these meals, it was very busy!
Here we can be seen in action, with some other Bisc staff and volunteers, and taking a break after a hectic evening! We served more than 140 meals! Well done!
Charl contributed to a paper with our collaborators, Prof Acad Xi Zhang and his group, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, investigating the self-assembled structures of bolaamphiphiles.
The study, exploring a facile counterion-directed structure switch from 0D/1D to 2D planar structures by a simple counterion exchange to tosylate ions, appeared online in Chemical Science recently. More to follow soon!
Angel is looking at the use of molecules found in biosupramolecular systems as building blocks, such as guanine, to produce oligo(aniline)-based materials with anisotropic properties. Thus, the understanding of the self-assembling properties of these kind of building blocks becomes crucial to achieve control over the morphology and the molecular architecture of the final material. The Symposium on Nucleic Acids, Hydrogen Bonding and Supramolecular Chemistry has provided to him the opportunity to talk and listen to various scientists experts in the area such as Jeffery Davis, University of Maryland, USA, and Stefano Masiero, University of Bologna, Italy. Both experts in the study of self-assembly of nucleobases and their use as functional materials. Angel is now back in Bristol, after an exciting scientific day at University of Warwick, with new insights and ideas in how to take advantage of the different self-assembling properties of guanine-based complexes to face his current scientific challenges to produce anisotropic oligo(aniline)-based materials.
In the Faul group we’re not only good at doing science, eating cakes is another of our specialities. This time, we couldn’t miss the chance to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with a delicious Mooncake – Thanks a lot to Zhonghua and Carl for sharing such as tasty festivity!
And finally, just to show that James (and Charl) were really working in China, here a photo of them both at James’ poster.
The FRG celebrated Ben Mills’ Birthday with a delicious lunch and a Chocolate cake! All our best wishes mate!
A large group from the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, including James (joint PhD student with Heinrich Hoerber) and Charl are currently in Beijing, China. They participated in a joint symposium on Tuesday with the CAS National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology on Monday (see the photo below), and are currently attending the ChinaNANO’13 conference.
On Monday they will visit our collaborators at the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University for the “1st Tsinghua-Bristol Joint Nanoscience Symposium”
Faul Research Group 