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!
A formal announcement was made this morning by the Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts, concerning funding of centres for doctoral training (CDTs).
Bristol performed very well, and managed to secure funding for 7 CDTs, while also partner and closely involved in a further 4 CDTs. Of particular interest was the successful funding bid for the BCFN, where Charl was closely involved in both the writing and the interview stages of the bid!
Well done Bristol!
It was recently announced that Charl has taken up an adjunct professorship at the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. This 3-year position will certainly contribute to strengthen the ties between Bristol and Tsinghua!
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.
In the Faul group we’re not only good at doing science, eating cakes is another of our specialities. This time, we couldn’t miss the chance to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with a delicious Mooncake – Thanks a lot to Zhonghua and Carl for sharing such as tasty festivity!
And finally, just to show that James (and Charl) were really working in China, here a photo of them both at James’ poster.
The FRG celebrated Ben Mills’ Birthday with a delicious lunch and a Chocolate cake! All our best wishes mate!
Faul Research Group 