We have had the privilege to have had both Wei and Ben (former PhD students) visiting during the last week! Was great to have both of them here, at the same time!
A new postdoc, Pan, also joined the group in the last week! Pan, who did his PhD at the National Centre for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing (with Prof Bao-Hang Han), was awarded a Newton International Fellowship for 2 years! Welcome Pan!
A paper, with authors from the Manners and Faul group, just appeared in Macromolecules. Liam, who is a joint PhD student between the two groups, contributed to the paper where the formation of uniform block copolymer fiberlike micelles of controlled length with a crystalline polyselenophene core was explored. Careful control of preparation conditions, especially choice of solvent for the self-assembly, led to the formation of very long fiberlike micelles (of up to 900 nm).
See the paper here for further details. Well done to Emily, Ali and Liam!
Maha and Charl attended the “McBain Medal 2017: Watching Colloids Work” meeting in London recently. Former Bristol student and good friend of the FRG, Dr Rico Tabor (from Monash University in Melbourne) was presented with the McBain medal of the Society of Chemical Industry. As part of the one-day symposium Maha presented a poster on some of her recent work on bola-amphipihles, while Charl gave an invited talk.
Great symposium, and a fantastic opportunity to meet many of the FRG’s collaborators!
The busy Christmas season has kicked off with a first “Mince Pie Mixer” of all of Charl’s undergraduate personal tutees and the whole Faul Research Group. This was a great event to get to know each other better, but also to exchange some tips around potential routes to further studies and employment.
This event was followed earlier this week by the FRG’s Christmas Party. It was, for the first time since Charl and Jacqueline’s arrival in Bristol, not held at their home, but at the very nice Grupo Lounge in Westbury-on-Trym! The food was great, Secret Santa presents exchanged, and generally a fantastic evening!
If you are from a commonwealth country and interested to join the Faul Research Group as postdoc, then you might be eligible to apply for a Commonwealth Rutherford Fellowship (UoB internal deadline 7th of December!). If you are interested to apply, please contact Prof. Faul with a one-page outline proposal as soon as possible. Eligibility criteria can be found here.
Commonwealth Rutherford Fellowships are for highly skilled researchers from other Commonwealth countries to spend one or two years at an eligible UK university or higher education institution conducting postdoctoral research. These fellowships are funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through the Rutherford Fund, with the aim of attracting global talent and supporting the UK’s research base. Up to 50 fellowships are available.
Veronica was formally welcomed to the University of Bristol, with all other new PhD students from across all faculties, by Prof Hugh Brady, President and Vice-Chancellor.
All new PhD students received a Bristol scarf as part of this event in the Great Hall in the Wills Memorial Building – as can be seen on the photo taken at the event!
A paper, with Yaozu (and his team at Donghua), Arne Thomas (in Berlin) and Charl on nitrogen-rich conjugated microporous polymers has now appeared in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
In this paper we explore the use of nitrogen-rich conjugated microporous polymers (prepared using an oxidative cross-linking approach) in a variety of applications, including carbon dioxide uptake (with high selectivity over nitrogen) and energy storage.
