Charl was privileged to be invited to attend the Royal Society and African Academy of Sciences‘ Connecting Minds Africa 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya.It was a great opportunity to meet a large number of bright and ambitious young academics from all over Africa, including Future Leader-African Independent Researcher (FLAIR) Fellows.
Charl also had the chance to meet his mentee, FLAIR Fellow and up-and-coming academic Professor Balla Diop Ngom from Dakar, Senegal!
It was a busy week in the Faul Research Group – we hosted a mini symposium with a large number of research groups based in the South West (Bath, Bristol, Cardiff) and active in the broad area of porous materials on Wednesday.
Sebastien did a great job in organising the symposium – thank you! We also received support from the Cabot Institute! The next meeting already planned for early next year!
What a fantastic team effort – the Faul Research Group baking, chopping, making and serving more than 250 meals at BISC earlier this week! It was a busy evening, but teamwork at its best!
Thanks to all who helped (also Esther, Veronica, Sylvia and Matthew, who were unfortunately not on this photo!), including two further volunteers from the School of Chemistry – Prof Tim Gallagher and Dr Justice Archer!
Congrats to Charlie and all other contributors – our paper in Macromolecules was just published! In this study, entitled “Linear and Branched Fiber-like Micelles from the Crystallization-Driven Self-Assembly of Heterobimetallic Block Copolymer Polyelectrolyte / Surfactant Complexes” we explored the solution self-assembly of a heterobimetallic diblock copolymer with a crystallizable poly(ferrocenyldimethylsilane) (PFS) core-forming block and a corona-forming segment featuring a poly(cobaltoceniumethylene) (PCE)-based polyelectrolyte/surfactant complex.
We found that key features of the one-dimensional (1D) morphologies were dependent on both the polarity of the solvent medium and temperature. Read the paper for more details – the 11th collaborative paper with the Manners group!
We have the pleasure of hosting Kamran, a PhD student from the National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, China. Kamran is from the group of one of Charl’s former postdocs – Prof Zhixiang Wei!
Kamran will be spending 6 weeks in Bristol on a new collaborative project in the area of energy storage. Welcome!
The group took a break from the lab last week, and spent some time at “Locked in a Room” on the Bristol harbour side!
Glad to report that both the groups solved the riddles and escaped from their rooms within the allotted time! See if you can identify all of the mad scientists! We wrapped up the morning’s activities with a great lunch!
Faul Research Group 