Prof Steve Armes, who was very recently elected as Fellow of the Royal Society, gave the RSC Tilden Award Lecture at the School of Chemistry on Wednesday, showing some of his exciting results on polymerisation-induced self-assembly. Ben from the FRG was the first speaker of the afternoon’s mini symposium!
Here he is in action, starting of a great symposium and an afternoon of excellent talks!
An Akagi group poster session was organised on the day that Charl visited. This was a great opportunity to discuss science, and see some of the beautiful results from the students in the group!
Everyone had a great time, especially as we went for a lovely dinner afterwards! We now look forward to hosting some colleagues from Kyoto in Bristol!
Charl is visiting Kyoto to catch up with Ben, as well as for a formal project discussion with Prof Akagi, his group members involved in the collaborative project, and Ben. This was also a chance for Ben and Charl to have a mini group meeting in Kyoto!
Mini group meeting in Kyoto!
This time there was no pizza or cake involved! Kanpai!
Charl visited the Xi’an Jiaotong University earlier this week to meet up with a former FRG group member and collaborator Jiangtao Feng! Jiangtao is now a member of faculty at the Department of Environmental Science and Technology.
Charl gave a lecture, met with several of the students in Prof Yan’s group, and discussed various joint projects! It was great to catch up with Jiangtao again!
Ben is spending two weeks in Kyoto, working in the group of Professor Kazuo Akagi (Dept. of Polymer Chemistry, Laboratory of Functional Polymer Synthesis).
He is collaborating with members of the Akagi group on a joint project funded by the Bristol-Kyoto strategic fund.
Charl (and Jacqueline) arrived in Beijing last week. Charl was formally awarded an adjunct professorship by Prof Xi Zhang (Head of the Department of Chemistry and Dean, Faculty of Science) after an introduction by Dr Huaping Xu (associate professor, Department of Chemistry). Huaping ended off his introductory remarks with the following quote from Henry Ford:
Coming together is a beginning,
Staying together is progress,
Working together is success.
Charl then proceeded to give a short acceptance speech, before launching into his first lecture (of a series introducing liquid crystals and soft matter) as part of the Tsinghua Xuetang programme. Charl and Prof Zhang then worked together, with Prof Zhang kindly providing some help and further explanations in Chinese to some of the students!
We had the pleasure of having a great line-up of speakers for the Peter Timms Symposium (named after the late Peter Timms, a pioneering chemist and the perfect gentleman!).
Arne (Thomas), Alex (from the FRG), Zac (Hudson, from the Manners Group) gave excellent lectures. The 2014 Timms Lecture was then given by Prof Craig Hawker (UCSB) – an exciting overview of some of the activities from his research laboratories. It was then our pleasure to have Liz Timms, Peter’s wife, hand over the Timms award to Craig.
The day was wrapped up with a wine reception! Thanks to all who were involved and helped to make it such a successful day!
Arne, one of the keynote speakers at the School of Chemistry’s Timms Symposium, is visiting the Faul Research Group today (Tuesday, 11th of March).
Arne, who is based at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, is spending the day talking to various FRG group members about their research.
Alex Bell, from the FRG, is also speaking at the Timms Symposium, talking about some of his exciting work on tetra(aniline)-graphene composites!
Charl and colleagues from the University of Bristol are attending the British Council’s UK recruitment fair held in Mexico City over the weekend. See the link to the fair’s Facebook pages, with a photo of Charl discussing the details of a course with a prospective student!
The fair is held in the very impressive and very colourful Camino Real Polanco hotel.
Emma Turner (Bristol Chemical Synthesis), Terry McMaster (Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials) and Charl visited the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on Friday. Terry and Charl visited the Institute of Materials Research to discuss future collaboration and student exchanges in a very successful meeting!
Here a photo of the central library (left) and the rector’s tower on the massive UNAM campus!
