BCFN in Changchun and Shanghai!

A group of students from the BCFN, including various Faul Research Group members, travelled to the State Key Laboratory for Supramolecular Materials and Structures at the College of Chemistry at Jilin University (Changchun), and then on to the State Key Laboratory for Polymers and Textile Fibers at Donghua University (Shanghai).

It was, in addition, great to have a mini Faul Research Group China reunion, with Yaozu, Wei (both now at Donghua), Robert, Esther, Henry, Christian and Charl!

Faul group in China!

Charl has, for the 4th time, taken a large group of BCFN students (and colleague, Tom Oliver!) to China for an extensive academic visit! First stop was ChinaNano 2019! In addition to students from the BCFN, a number of Faul group members also joined this scientific expedition!

Here the whole group, which included Pan, Robert, Christian, Victoria, Tom, Sian, Charl, Esther, Henry and Alicia!

And here the Faul group members Pan, Esther, Christian, Robert, Henry and Charl on their own! Fortunately Pan, who is from Beijing, helped us to find an excellent local Beijing roast duck restaurant!

 

Best talk at M4 Colloids!

Christian, a BCFN PhD student jointly supervised by close collaborator Jonathan Rossiter and Charl, won the prize for the best talk at the M4 Colloids Symposium. This annual one-day conference, sponsored by the RSC, is an excellent platform for the exchange of scientific ideas between research groups from the Universities of Bristol, Bath and Cardiff, along with others from the UK and abroad.

Well done Christian!

Paper in Angewandte Chemie, with a pinch of salt!

Fantastic news! A paper from the Faul Research Group by Jie Chen (now back in China), Esther Townsend (BCFN), Veronica del Angel Hernandez, Pan, and colleagues from the Xi’an Jiaotong University in China appeared in Angewandte Chemie today!

BXJ_CMPs.jpg

The discovery of the Bristol-Xi’an Jiaotong (BXJ) approach, where we use simple inorganic salts to carefully tune N-containing conjugated microporous materials (CMPs), enables elegant synthetic control over the surface area, pore size distributions and function of N-containing CMPs. This approach enables the preparation of amorphous porous materials that start to challenge COFs and MOFs in properties and function!

Well done to all involved!!

Timms Symposium 2019!

We had the pleasure of hosting a number of top international scientists at our annual flagship materials chemistry event, the Peter Timms Symposium, including Pol Besenius (Mainz, Germany), and Marina Kuimova (Imperial College). We also had great contributions from two early career researchers from Bristol – Laura Fox  (from the Briscoe Group) and Emily Baker (Woolfson lab).

The day ended on a very high note with a fantastic Timms Lecture given by our colleague and close collaborator Ian Manners – a fitting way to celebrate his exciting science and showcasing his contributions to the School of Chemistry as he prepares to leave for Canada. We were delighted that Liz Timms, the wife of the late Peter Timms, could join us to hand over a small award!

Esther in Aus!

Esther is currently visiting collaborator and good friend Rico Tabor‘s group at Monash University (in Melbourne, Australia!). Here she is with Rico, Luke (co-supervised by Charl) and other members of Rico’s group!

She also used this opportunity to attend and give a talk at the 9th biennial Australian Colloid and Interface Symposium, which was held in Hobart, Tasmania. Enjoy!

Visitors from Jilin

It was great to be able to host (with fantastic support from the BCFN) 5 staff and 10 graduate students from the State Key Laboratory for Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University (Changchun, China)! The visit, to discuss new joint undergraduate programmes, and to further explore research interactions, was a fantastic success!

There was also a poster session, where Esther and Christian presented some of their latest results! More photos to follow!

Great to see old friends again (including Prof Kun Liu and Dayang Wang), but also to make many new friends and connections!