Welcome, Churchill!
03/02/25 12:00
It is our pleasure to welcome to ESMP our newest PhD candidate, Churchill Agoni! Originally from Nigeria, Churchill comes to us via Finland, where he got his M.Sc. in Optics from the University of Eastern Finland. He'll be working on the SHADOW project, a collaboration with Irena Drevenšek-Olenik and Miha Ravnik at the University of Ljubljana on ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals under confinement.
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Häerzlech Wëlkomm, Tadej!
15/01/25 16:20
As our first post for 2025, it is our pleasure to introduce our newest group member, Tadej Emeršič! Originally from Slovenia, Tadej comes to ESMP after a postdoc in Juan de Pablo's group at the University of Chicago. He'll be working with us on the INVISIMARK project, in cooperation with the Luxembourg Ministry of Defense, in which he'll be exploring the use of cholesteric shell reflectors for friend-or-foe secure identification purposes.
Tadej also visited us many years ago (in 2019), so it's nice to welcome him back to ESMP, though this time for a bit longer than his previous visit.
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Tadej also visited us many years ago (in 2019), so it's nice to welcome him back to ESMP, though this time for a bit longer than his previous visit.
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BriCE: Liquid Crystal Elastomers to Monitor the Health of Bridges
16/12/24 15:30
We are delighted to share that Jan's project BriCE (Novel Concrete Bridge Spatially-Distributed Monitoring Through Chromatic Liquid Crystal Elastomers), a collaboration with Dr. Numa Bertola of the Sustainable Concrete Structures group at the University of Luxembourg, was just funded by the University of Luxembourg Institute for Advanced Studies! This four-year project will investigate further use of our mechanochromic liquid crystal elastomers to monitor the structural health of bridges, detecting cracks and failures as early as possible.
Not from BriCE, but from our recent publication with Danièle Waldmann-Schmidt's group on using mechanochromic LCEs for monitoring crack formation in concrete
Even more good news to end the year; stay tuned for further updates!
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New Publication in Energy & Environmental Science
11/12/24 12:30
Congratulations to Yansong, Jan, alumni Rijeesh and Hakam, and our collaborators in the Laboratory for Photovoltaics for their recent publication, "Arbitrary and active colouring of solar cells with negligible loss of efficiency", in Energy & Environmental Science! As part of the FNR-funded project LETZCOLOR, this recent work explores the use of polymerized liquid crystals to beautify solar cell panels without any cost to the performance of the panels.
The article is free to access and read; a very nice way to end the year!
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The article is free to access and read; a very nice way to end the year!
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New Publications and New Horizons
28/11/24 18:15
A lot has been happening in ESMP since our last website update! To give a rundown:
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- We recently have had several publications go online: one as a collaboration between David Walba's and Apala Majumdar's group (with group alumni Anjali and Mitch) in Soft Matter; one with Danièle Waldmann-Diederich's group at TU Darmstadt in Structural Health Monitoring; and one in Physical Review E with Apala Majumdar's group as well on the dynamics of liquid crystal shells.
- In collaboration with Eugene Terentjev of the University of Cambridge and Maria Helena Godinho of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Jan recently was awarded an ERC Synergy grant for their proposal ALCEMIST on making more sustainable liquid crystal elastomers from cellulose. This is a big project that we're looking forward to, and more details on this will come in the new year. (This also means we'll probably be posting positions soon!)
- As group members prepare to leave, we also will be passing the mantle of certain roles onto other people, and we now have a new website coordinator! Larry Honaker, our recently rejoined postdoc, will be handling website content and management for the foreseeable future; this also means that the website will soon be overhauled with a new version to hopefully launch by the end of the year.
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Welcome Emily
06/09/24 17:12
Welcome Emily,
Emily is a visiting PhD student from Prof. Emily Davidson's research group in Princeton University, USA. In our group, she is investigating the effect of chiral dopants on spontaneous symmetry-breaking in monodisperse 'flexible' bent-core LC oligomers she has synthesized. She is also working on tuning liquid crystal elastomer phase behavior, actuation, and optical properties via the chemical incorporation of these 'flexible' bent-core LC's.
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Emily is a visiting PhD student from Prof. Emily Davidson's research group in Princeton University, USA. In our group, she is investigating the effect of chiral dopants on spontaneous symmetry-breaking in monodisperse 'flexible' bent-core LC oligomers she has synthesized. She is also working on tuning liquid crystal elastomer phase behavior, actuation, and optical properties via the chemical incorporation of these 'flexible' bent-core LC's.
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Welcome Alejandro and Larry
21/08/24 15:20
Welcome Alejandro(left) and welcome back Larry(right)
This August we have two postdocs join us.
Alejandro will work on the LiCER(Liquid-crystal Elastomer Robotics) project, which aims to design and develop an instrumented actuator from liquid crystal elastomers to build an endoscope soft robot.
Larry did his Ph.D. in our group. After 4 years postdoc stay at Wageningen University & Research, he return to ESMP to work on the Marie Sktodowska-Curie Action-funded project TECHSTILE, working to create wearable technology incorporating liquid crystal and liquid armor functionality.
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This August we have two postdocs join us.
Alejandro will work on the LiCER(Liquid-crystal Elastomer Robotics) project, which aims to design and develop an instrumented actuator from liquid crystal elastomers to build an endoscope soft robot.
Larry did his Ph.D. in our group. After 4 years postdoc stay at Wageningen University & Research, he return to ESMP to work on the Marie Sktodowska-Curie Action-funded project TECHSTILE, working to create wearable technology incorporating liquid crystal and liquid armor functionality.
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Welcome Rebecca
17/06/24 15:04
Welcome back Rebecca,
After one year, Rebecca finished her B.S. in Industrial Design and come back for an internship to help our group members construct equipment and experimental setups for various projects.
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After one year, Rebecca finished her B.S. in Industrial Design and come back for an internship to help our group members construct equipment and experimental setups for various projects.
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New publication
21/02/24 17:34
It's time to congrats to myself, Yucen, Yansong, Yong, Apala and Jan for a new paper: Tunable templating of photonic microparticles via liquid crystal order-guided adsorption of amphiphilic polymers in emulsions on nature communications
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New publiction
20/12/23 16:37
Congrats to Jan for a new paper : The good, the bad and the ugly faces of cyanobiphenyl mesogens in selected tracks of fundamental and applied liquid crystal research on Liquid Crystals.
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