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!
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!
Maha successfully passed her viva, with external examiner Cecile Dreiss from King’s College London. This fantastic achievement was celebrated in the appropriate fashion – with some home-made cake (by Veronica)!
Congratulations Dr Maha! Well done!
We had the pleasure of hosting two collaborators from the Department of Chemistry, IIT Kharagpur in Bristol for a week! It was great to have Professors Sanjib Patra (who spent 4 years in Bristol as postdoc in our close collaborator Ian Manners‘ group) and Sabyashachi Mishra here interacting with colleagues, exploring new opportunities and giving talks!
This visit, funded by the University of Bristol’s International Strategic Fund, is part of a much larger collaboration (Manners/Faul – Patra/Misha) funded by the Indian government’s SPARC initiative. We also had the chance, with our local collaborator Dr Natalie Fey, to meet with the UoB’s International Office to discuss further interactions!
We look forward to many further future interactions and exchanges!
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!
Charl spent a few days in Changchun, China, continuing to strengthen ties to Jilin University‘s College of Chemistry. He gave a short introductory course on soft matter and liquid crystals to a group of early career graduate students.
Great to visit again, and looking forward to the next visit in August!
Veronica recently won the prize for the best poster (out of 100!) at the 17th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilization – ICCDU 2019 in Aachen, Germany.
Fantastic! Well done Veronica!
Charl is currently teaching at the Yangqi campus of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) outside Beijing (which is currently very sunny and warm!). It has been a full week of teaching, group work and interactions with a great class of 60 early career researchers from a range of scientific backgrounds and disciplines!
It seems that Charl is the tallest in the class!
We had the pleasure of hosting Dr Samuel Chigome, Secretary of the African Materials Research Society and based at BITRI, Botswana, for a quick one-day visit. This was a a great opportunity to continue discussions and expansion of our Bristol chapter of the AMRS (BCAMRS).
More updates and information to follow about BCAMRS soon! See below a photo from our recent launch event, kindly hosted by Jacqueline at the Bristol International Student Centre (BISC).
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!
Faul Research Group 