Various member of the Faul Research group were in Canada in the past week. Charlie, Liam and Horatio at the Canadian Society for Chemistry’s Conference, and Esther, Betty, Christian and Charl at the University of Waterloo’s Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology.
Charl will also be visiting the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, hosted by Prof. Dwight Seferos – more details to follow.
Zack had his viva this morning with Dr Miriam Unterlass from TU Wien in Austria and Dr Avinash Patil from Bristol, and passed with flying colours. We were also treated to an inspiring talk from Miriam yesterday about her work on the green synthesis of organic materials. Congratulations Zack!
We had the pleasure of hosting the annual materials chemistry, the Timms Symposium, last week here in Bristol.
Close collaborator and good friend, Prof Xi Zhang from Tsinghua University, was the Timms Lecturer for 2017. He was supported on the day by excellent presentations by Dr Annela Seddon (Director of the BCFN), Prof. Jean-Francois Lutz (Strasbourg), Jess Gwyther (from the Manners group) and Jason Potticary (from the Hall group).
We were also very pleased that Liz Timms, the late Peter Timms wife, could join for the afternoon, and hand over a small award to Prof Zhang!
Charl visited Shanghai as part of the University of Bristol’s China Graduation activities. He used this opportunity to visit the Shanghai Jiaotong University, where he met up with various former postdocs and friends from Bristol.
He also gave a talk, and enjoyed discussing science with Hongjing and Huibin, both postdocs from the Manners’ group!
Charl is back in Beijing at Tsinghua, teaching an introductory course on liquid crystals and soft matter on the Tsinghua Xuetang programme. His host is prof Xi Zhang, who will visit Bristol in May this year.
Before the lecture series starts, there was an opportunity to enjoy good weather and clear skies to see Beijing from a different perspective!
Ben had his viva at the end of last week, and performed exceptionally well! A perfect way to end his PhD, and a very good reason to end the week on a high note with cake, fizz and celebrations!
Here Ben is celebrating with Simon Hall (internal examiner), Charl and Uwe Bunz (external examiner). More photos of the celebrations to follow! Well done Ben!
Pete shared some of his latest results in a mini symposium as part of Prof. Ryota Sakamota’s visit, while Carl gave an excellent talk before our main speaker of the day – Prof Uwe Bunz from Heidelberg.
Uwe gave a great talk on some exciting new approaches to chemical sensors (so-called “chemical tongues”). Great talks, and exciting science all around!
We have a busy two weeks coming up – with Pete and Carl speaking at two mini symposia connected to two international speakers this week [Prof Sakamoto and Prof Bunz]. These events will be followed by Ben’s viva on Friday, and another symposium next week (Prof Pietrangelo, where Ben will be speaking).
Updates and photos to follow!
Charl is currently in Australia, where he was invited to speak at research management workshop at Macquarie University (Sydney), and at the Australasian Colloids and Interface Society 2017 Meeting (Coffs Harbour).
Sydney was sweltering, but fortunately cooled down after a massive rain storm! Here a view of the famous sights in the harbour area, just before the storm hit!
Charl had the pleasure of visiting Malaysia for some recruitment activities (in and around Kuala Lumpur) recently.
It was a busy time, with visits to the Ministry of Education, a local matriculation college (just outside KL), as well as a British Council Recruitment fair. More photos from the school visit to appear shortly!
Faul Research Group 