Alumni
Nina Schwarz
Martin Urbanski
Ji Hyun Park
Mathias Bourg
Johanna Bruckner
Dae Kyom Kim
Jong Hwan Lee
Stefan Schymura
Sarah Dölle
Duckhee Kim
Kevin Reguengo de Sousa
Benjamin Henx
Martin Kühnast
Sammy Wagner
Hsin-Ling Liang
Eva Enz
Minsik Hwang
YooMee Kye
Christina Schütz
Post-doc ResearcherChristina obtained her PhD in materials chemistry from Stockholm University in Sweden. She explored the surface modification, and self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals.
Anshul Sharma
Post-doc ResearcherAnshul earned her PhD in Chemical Physics in December 2015 after having worked in Dr. Torston & Dr. Elda Hegmanns' research groups at the Liquid Crystal Institute in Kent University, Ohio, USA. In our group she worked on electrospinning LC elastomers for tensile based selective reflection sensors.
Benjamin Dupas
Visiting InternBenjamin was a French student in an engineering school who did a 6 month-internship in the ESMP group. His work in the group consisted of producing and characterizing CNC suspensions and films under the supervision of Manos.
Joana Ferreira
B.Sc. Student InternJungHyun Noh
PhD Defended - 03/2018JungHyun worked with microfluidics and other methods for creating liquid crystal droplets and shells. She studied their optical properties and topological defect arrangements in different phases as part of the FNR funded ULISCO project.
Andy Schanen
M.Sc. Student InternAndy was a Physics Master student under the direction of Larry. He was studying equilibrium and dynamic interfacial tension measurements between aqueous surfactant solutions and liquid crystals. He was working towards the automation of this process using image analysis techniques.
Ursa Ursic
InternUrša was a bachelors student studying physics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She was doing a six-month internship with ESMP group. She worked mainly with Rao on a custom-made dual confocal microscope. The aim was to obtain controlled polymerisation on reactive mesogens dispersed in the nematic liquid crystal shell using UV laser.
Lionel Fru
M.Sc. Student InternLionel was a masters student studying physics at the University of Luxembourg. He was studying the process of film formation from evaporating sessile droplets of aqueous suspensions of CNCs under the direction of Manos.
Camila Honorato
PhD CandidateCamila made CNCs (cellulose nanocrystals) suspended in water, and studies their lyotropic liquid crystal self-assembly and its competition with the tendency of the nanorods to get stuck in a jammed state. She was working on the FNR-funded project MISONANCE.
Lawrence Honaker
PhD CandidateLarry worked on the jetting of liquid metals in co-flowing systems with a view to their incorporation into polymer fibers under the AFR project LIMEFLOW.
RESEARCH GATE
Andy Stoffel
Master StudentAndy earned his B.Sc in Physics from the University of Luxembourg. He was doing his master's project on "Tailor made-defects for tuning the actuation response in liquid crystal elastomer shells".
Anjali Sharma
PhD CandidateShe worked on creating liquid crystal shells and using them for bio-sensing applications
RESEARCH GATE
Tabea Pfister
Intern Tabea is a master student at the University of Stuttgart. She is in Luxembourg for an internship for 2.5 months. She was working on the fractionation of Chitin-based nanocrystals, which tend to form a chiral nematic phase. Fractionation is basically separating polydisperse nanocrystals into fractions with longer and with shorter particles.
Emmanouil (‘Manos’) Anyfantakis
Postdoctoral ResearcherManos earned his MSc in applied molecular spectroscopy after writing a thesis on the thermodynamics and phase behavior of organosilica nanoparticles. He earned his PhD in Chemistry in 2010 at the Univ. of Crete & FORTH, in Greece where he investigated light-induced pattern formation in polymer solutions. During his phd studies, Manos spent one year in MPIP, Mainz, Germany, in the group of H.-J. Butt. Following his military service, Manos returned to MPIP as a postdoc in 2011, to explore the dynamic wetting of surfactant solutions. In 2013, Manos joined the group of D. Baigl at ENS, Paris, France where he initiated projects concerning various optofluidic and patterning phenomena, in part thanks to an independent Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship that he was awarded.
Manos became a member of the ESMP group in July 2017, and explored how simultaneously occurring phenomena (e.g. hydrodynamic flows, kinetic arrest, LC structure formation) affect the structure of films formed after the evaporation of cellulose nanocrystal dispersions.
Manos became a member of the ESMP group in July 2017, and explored how simultaneously occurring phenomena (e.g. hydrodynamic flows, kinetic arrest, LC structure formation) affect the structure of films formed after the evaporation of cellulose nanocrystal dispersions.
WEBSITE
Claudia Kieffer
Bachelor studentClaudia did her thesis in the ESMP group together with Deniz. They worked on finding the refractive indices of nematic polymerised liquid crystal mixture.
Lenka Vitkova
InternLenka is currently a PhD student at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic. She is focusing on fabrication of biopolymer based 3D scaffolds for cells cultivation. Here at University of Luxembourg she spent two months with us, during which she investigated the liquid crystalline behavior of collagen solutions, and utilized these properties in electrospun fibers.
Shameek Vats
PhD CandidateShameek joined the ESMP group in July 2017 to work on the INTERACT project. He worked on finding suitable textile-grade like polymers for further stabilizing liquid crystal cores in electrospun LC-fiber mats.
Rukhsar Ahmed
Master StudentRukhsar received his bachelor degree from University of Gujrat, Pakistan. Currently, he is doing his master in University of Luxembourg. In our group he investigated to make fibers by using frugal science by electrospinning technique
Axel Lorant
Bachelor StudentAxel did his bachelor thesis in our group. He investied the isotropic-nematic phase transition of liquid crystal oligomers dissolved in a solvent as it evaporates. Furthermore, he also studied the impact of the concentration of chiral dopant on the ground-state color of cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs).
Hakam Agha
Postdoctoral ResearcherHakam earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Lebanese University in Beirut, and his Masters degree from Henri Poincaré university in Nancy France (currently known as University of Lorraine). He later earned his PhD in material science from the university of Strasbourg in France under the guidance of Prof. Yves Galerne in 2013. Afterwards, he joined the group of Dr. Christian Bahr as a postdoctoral researcher in Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization in Göttingen, Germany, where he studied liquid crystals flow in PDMS based microfluidics. Hakam is worked in our group on a project funded by the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) where he is investigating the optical behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal droplets for object detection.
Mitch Magrini
VisitorMitch was visiting us from Boulder, CO (USA) where he is Ph.D. student in chemistry working on synthesizing novel liquid crystalline materials to test the limits of packing and frustration of molecules in LC phases. During his short visit, he worked on polymerization of LC shells.
Venkata S.R. Jampani
Postdoctoral ResearcherHis research focused on topological defects in liquid crystal elastomeric shells and their applications, and liquid crystal shells, droplets and their self-assembly. He was working on the ERC funded project "INTERACT".
WEBSITE
Majdi Assaid
Bachelor StudentMajdi studied light scattering from polymers templated from cholesteric liquid crystals, after they are immersed in transparent media of different refractive indices. In particular, he focused on cholesterics with short enough pitch to selectively reflect light in the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, as well as long enough pitch for the selective reflection to be in the infrared (IR) spectrum.
Katrin schelski
PhD CandidateKatrin earned her MSc in Analytical Chemistry and Quality Assurance from the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (HBRS), Germany. Before joining ESMP she worked on liquid crystal-based gas sensing and furthermore visited the group as an intern. Her project is about the potential of electrospun, liquid crystal-filled polymer fibers for the quantitative detection of volatile organic compounds.
Rijeesh Kizhakidathazhath
Postdoctoral ResearcherRijeesh earned his Ph.D. in Life Science from Hokkaido University, Japan under the guidance of Prof. Nobuyuki Tamaoki with the thesis entitled “Dynamic induction of enantiomeric excess from a prochiral azobenzene dimer under circularly polarized light”. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the group of Prof. Hirotsugu Kikuchi at Kyushu University, Japan and his research focused on the development of high-performance liquid crystal / polymer composites using unique molecular designs. He joined the ESMP group in June 2018 and worked on the production of polymerizable cholesteric liquid crystal shells for making authentication or reflector tags. He also preparaed of cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers for the applications in LC-based wearable technology.
ORCiD
Catherine G. Reyes
Postdoctoral ResearcherCatherine used coaxial electrospinning to produce responsive fibers functionalized with liquid crystals in the core. She also studied the complex relationships between LC & polymer solutions when exposed to the spinning process. The ultimate aim to use these LC-fibers in autonomous wearable tech. devices. She was working on the ERC funded INTERACT project.
Vanessa Schmidt-Barbé
Group AssistantVanessa was our group’s secretary who helped us balance our budgets & with purchasing all of our equipment (extremely important!)
Ashutosh Meelu
Master StudentAshutosh investigated the roles of anisotropic deswelling and osmotic expansion, respectively, in LCE shells, non-chiral nematics that acquire negative order parameter as a result, as well as short-pitch chiral nematics.
Xiang Zhang
Master Student She did her master thesis about "Preparation of liquid crystal shells by controlled phase separation in droplets" here.
Yosuke Pestana Nakamura
Bachelor StudentYosuke did his bachelor thesis in our group. He studied the small-scale limit of cholesteric spherical reflectors (CSRs). In particular, he prepared liquid crystal droplets by different methods, turning them into solids by polymerization and then characterizing them locally, using a polarizing microscope, as well as macroscopically, using cameras and external illuminators.
Valentin Kengawe
Bachelor studentValentin started his bachelor in Brussels at ULB and he came to Luxembourg for finishing his bachelor and switching from a theoretical to a experimental focused degree. His project in the group is to do a computer simulation of evaporative flows during cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer preparation using OpenFoam