Charl is currently in Singapore at the ICMAT2015 meeting. Great meeting, with the chance to see presentations from Nicola Pinna (now in Berlin, former colleague from the MPI in Golm), Uwe Bunz (Heidelberg), Stefan Kaskel (Dresden), Dorota Koziej (ETH Zurich, working with former MPI colleague Markus Niederberger), and former FRG member, Tierui Zhang (Beijing).
Bristol is a great city to live in … and if you are curious to experience a bit of Bristol (before visiting!), then follow one of these links and be welcomed to Bristol (on Vimeo or Youtube, thanks to the efforts of Jamie Brightmore)! Enjoy!
Rico, a graduate from Bristol, returned to the chemistry lecture theatres to give a lecture rather than receive one! His talk on functional, fluorinated and unconventional surfactants highlighted his group‘s current research at the School of Chemistry, Monash University, Australia.
It was fantastic to have a great academic visit the department and interact with the group!
Professor Maria Forsyth, from Deakin University’s Institute of Frontier Materials, and Associate Director of ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, is visiting the UK from Australia. She visited Bristol today, and gave a talk entitled “Ionic Liquid And Organic Ionic Plastic Crystal Electrolytes For Energy Storage Devices”.
Great to be able to host Maria during her short visit to Bristol!
Please have a look at the website and register (free!) to join the FunMat 2015 symposium in Prague at the end of July!
Exciting line-up of speakers, opportunity to present your science, and a beautiful place to visit! Sign up!
Charl finished his “Introduction to Liquid Crystals and Soft Matter” course for undergraduates at the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University earlier this week.
As part of the course, the students spent a morning in the laboratories, making their own liquid crystals, and observing the fascinating textures using polarised light microscopy!
Charl attended the UoB’s graduation ceremony in Beijing on Saturday … and had the chance to celebrate with 4 BCFN MSc students who also received their degrees! Congratulations!
Charl was privileged to meet with Prof Chunli Bai, the President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and pioneer of SPM techniques in China. Prof Bai was awarded an honorary degree by Bristol on Saturday.
New group member, Kazuyoshi Watanabe, was welcomed to the group in true British style – with a trip to the pub!
He joins the group as a post-doctoral research fellow after completing his PhD in Kyoto, Japan under Professor Akagi.
Welcome to Bristol and welcome to the FRG!
Yaozu’s paper in Macromolecules on novel porous materials based on perylene diimides and triazines have appeared online! This exciting work (in collaboration with Jens Weber) discusses the preparation of porous and related carbon materials, and their excellent selectivity and capability for CO2 uptake.
Please read more here!
Frank, a professor of organic materials and nanosystems at the University of Würzburg, Germany, visited Bristol on 4th March to present his exciting work on perylene diimide materials and their supramolecular assembly.
His lecture was preceded by a series of excellent talks by Bristol postgraduate researchers on topics from nanoparticle assembly at interfaces to the monitoring of micellular growth using the latest fluorescent techniques!
Faul Research Group 
