Charl also visited Prof Bo Song at the University of Soochow, Suzhou, China. Bo, a former PhD student of close collaborator prof Xi Zhang at Tsinghua University, was the perfect host, and made sure that the stay was perfect!
Charl gave two lectures – one covering research aspects from the Faul Research Group, and one where he shared some experiences about laboratory safety from the School of Chemistry here in Bristol!
Charl is currently in China for a short conference tour. He is starting in Beijing, where he is speaking at the Porous Organic Polymers meeting (held in the impressive Chinese Academy of Science’s Academic Hall).
Charl will then also visit former FRG group member Yaozu Liao at Donghua University in Shanghai, to take part in an exciting one-day symposium (organised by Yaozu). Finally, Charl will use the opportunity to visit and give an invited lecture at Suzhou University.
Maha and Charl are attending the well-known International Conference on Synthetic Metals, the longest-running conference series in the field of conducting and semiconducting organic materials. This year the conference is held in Guangzhou, China, which is very humid and hot this time of the year!
Maha is presenting a poster, and Charl gave a talk on Monday (and chaired the afternoon session). More updates to follow soon!
Charl is visiting the chemistry departments at the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch this week to explore potential collaborations and give research seminars. It is of course great to be back in South Africa, and great to visit old friends, colleagues and potential new collaborators.
Charl is being hosted by Assoc. Prof. Greg Smith at UCT, and Dr Prinessa Chellan at Stellenbosch.
Esther successfully defended her MSc thesis earlier this week. She did a great job, and both the examiners (Dr George Whittell, as internal, and Dr Louis Adriaenssens from the University of Lincoln) were very impressed with her performance! With the viva behind her, Esther is ready to join the BCFN as PhD student in September.
Of course we celebrated afterwards! Well done Esther!
Charl gave an invited lecture at the 21st International Symposium on Surfactants in Solution 2016 (or SIS2016 for short!), held in Jinan, Shandong province, in China (see photo below). Prof. Jingcheng Hao, Head of the Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface Chemistry, Shandong University, was the local host.
The conference had many exciting presentations, including a plenary lecture from the legendary Prof. Toyoko Imae (now in Taiwan), who was one of the first (if not the first) scientist to have imaged worm-like micelles!
The School of Chemistry had the pleasure to host Sebastien Perrier (Warrick) and Stuart James (QUB) at our annual Peter Timms Symposium.
Prof. Karen L. Wooley from Texas A&M University, the Peter Timms Lecturer, gave a fantastic talk! She was then presented with a small award by the late Peter’s wife, Liz Timms.
It was a great afternoon of exciting world-class science … supported by two local speakers, Hongjing Dou and Ben from the FRG!
Kazu is currently in Kyoto, doing some further measurements on some of his new chiral materials. He was awarded a travel grant by the University of Bristol’s International Strategic Fund, so will be doing circularly polarised luminescence measurements for two weeks in the group of Prof Kazuo Akagi!
In the meantime Charl has travelled to Trinity College Dublin (invited by Rachel Evans) to give a talk!
Charl had the pleasure of visiting the State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials at Jilin University again. He gave a lecture as part of their State Key Lab lecture series (invited by Professors Junqi Sun and Wenke Zhang), before enjoying a very interesting half-day mini symposium with a number of young faculty.
We look forward to hosting visitors from Changchun in Bristol soon!
Charl visited the College of Chemistry, University of Nankai in Tianjin earlier this week, hosted by Profs. Guan and Zhang. Charl gave a talk (see the photo to see the topic covered!), and enjoyed discussing some of the exciting science from the State Key lab!
Faul Research Group 