Arne, one of the keynote speakers at the School of Chemistry’s Timms Symposium, is visiting the Faul Research Group today (Tuesday, 11th of March).
Arne, who is based at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, is spending the day talking to various FRG group members about their research.
Alex Bell, from the FRG, is also speaking at the Timms Symposium, talking about some of his exciting work on tetra(aniline)-graphene composites!
Charl and colleagues from the University of Bristol are attending the British Council’s UK recruitment fair held in Mexico City over the weekend. See the link to the fair’s Facebook pages, with a photo of Charl discussing the details of a course with a prospective student!
The fair is held in the very impressive and very colourful Camino Real Polanco hotel.
The University of Bristol has just announced the launch of a new agreement with the CSC. There are 10 scholarships available, for up to 4 years of study at Bristol.
If you are interested, then please contact Charl as soon as possible. The deadline for submitting an offer letter to the CSC is the 20th of March. Details of this exciting opportunity is provided here!
The FRG had the pleasure of hosting Prof Iain McCulloch, from Imperial, on Wednesday. Iain’s talk was preceded by a student mini symposium, where Angel also spoke! Angel gave a great presentation, which was then followed by a fantastic lecture by Iain on the “Design of Polymer Semiconductors for Solar Cells and Organic Electronics”.
It was great to hear the latest results from Iain’s group, and an exciting opportunity to hear about some of our own students’ research!
Charl had the chance to experience the world-leading research activities in materials chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and self-assembly at the University of Tokyo. Prof Takashi Kato, the perfect host, organised an excellent visit for Charl, including a research seminar on Tuesday morning, and many interesting discussions.
Takashi also ensured that Charl experienced excellent Japanese food!
Charl also had the chance to look around Tokyo on Sunday (especially Shinjuku district).
Although also Christmas season, it is also viva season in the FRG. Emily successfully defended her thesis on Monday the 2nd of December, Ben his on Thursday the 5th of December, and Tom is defending his thesis today! Well done Emily and Ben, and good luck Tom!
More details and photos to follow soon!
The FRG wishes all the best to Charl!
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.
Faul Research Group 