Charl will be speaking at the Bristol & Bath Science Cafe on Monday, 30th of July, at the Tobacco Factory. As the POM images on the Gallery page caught the attention of organisers, it was decided to add further colourful ones over the last 24h hours! Enjoy!
Huaping Xu, and a PhD student Kai Liu, from the Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijiing, visited Bristol from Saturday – Tuesday. After an interesting day of scientific discussions, Huaping gave an excellent talk entitled: “Selenium-containing Polymers: from Molecular Design to Controlled Self-assembly and Disassembly.” We then all rewarded ourselves by going to the Robin Hood on St. Michael’s Hill!
See the link on the University of Bristol’s Weibo pages!
This week I have been in Baltimore, MD (USA) for the 86th Annual Colloids and Surface Science Symposium. The meeting was held at Johns Hopkins University, a beautiful, leafy campus with grand red brick and marble halls.
The conference was organised over 3 days and featured 7 parallel sessions each day in addition to a variety of plenary and award lectures. The science was fascinating, with topics covering the fundamentals of the hydrophobic interaction, micro-scale self-folding origami structures, and biological and environmental applications. I presented my talk, “Oligo(aniline) nanofilms via ionic self-assembly”, on the 2nd day within the Molecular Assembly section, which also featured talks on poly(electrolyte)-surfactant complexation and other surface self-assembly.
The conference banquet was held on the evening of the second day at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Highlights of the food on offer were the local specialties of crab cakes and steamed crab!
Check out the picture gallery for some shots of Johns Hopkins University, me presenting and the conference banquet at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Natalie Stingelin, from the Department of Materials and Centre for Plastic Electronics, visited the FRG labs and the BCFN yesterday. She gave an excellent talk on manipulating phase transformations and order of organic semi-conductors in the solid state. It was a pleasure to have her here, and we look forward to continued contact in the future!
In the last lecture of Charl’s lecture, he spoke at at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Materials and Engineering (hosted by professors Zhong and Zou), on Wednesday the 16th of May. As this was Charl’s last day in China, it was the perfect end to a very successful and fruitful stay!
Charl’s penultimate presentation of his extended lecture tour of China was giving at the Key Laboratory of Functional Polymers at Nankai University, Tianjin, on Monday the 14th of May. Prof Ying Guan was the perfect host! Here he is talking about Bristol during his presentation. More details about the University of Bristol on the chinese website Weibo.
Charl also enjoyed a lovely boat trip in Tianjin with husband-and-wife team professors Guan and Zhang, and their children Michael and Max!
Charl also took the opportunity to give a talk at the University of Shanghai Science and Technology on Wednesday the 9th of May, invited by Dr. Yaozu Liao. Yaozu spent two years in prof Ric Kaner’s labs at UCLA (where Charl recently visited).
Zhixiang and Charl enjoyed a very interesting visit and scientific discussions at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, hosted by prof Yongfeng Zhou. Here a photo with Prof Xinyuan Zhu, Zhixiang, Academician Prof Yan, Charl and Yongfeng, after scientific presentations from Zhixiang and Charl, and just before a delicious lunch!
Zhixiang and Charl enjoyed a relaxing day on Sunday, walking along the famous West Lake in Hangzhou and enjoyed some local fish for lunch. After lunch and a boat trip across the lake, they headed up to Longjin village, famous for it’s excellent tea! We sampled some of the local produce and Zhixiang bargained with the owner of the tea shop about the price of various teas. Finally, after a deal was struck, the lady took us out into the woods and up the hills to their farm! Fascinating stuff! On Monday both Zhixiang and Charl give a lecture at the Institute of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhijiang University in Hangzhou (host: Prof Gao Chao) before heading off to Shanghai Jiaotong University.
Charl is currently on a short lecture tour in China, with his first stop at the Harbin Institute of Technology (host – prof. Shaoqin Liu). He also had the chance to enjoy the interesting multi-cultural city of Harbin (with lots of influence from Russia), as well as some rather hungry looking Siberian tigers!
Faul Research Group 