It is our pleasure to congratulate three of the newest Docteurs de l'Université du Luxembourg! And these defenses all happened in the same very busy last week, so lots of guests to welcome and lots to celebrate.

First up, on 25 August, Xu Ma defended her Ph.D. thesis, "Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Spheres for Visible and Infrared Operation: From Tunable Configurations to Continuous Production".

Secondly, on 27 August, Deniz Avşar defended her Ph.D. thesis, "Encoding Information as Unobtrusive Graphical Patterns Using Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors: From Optical and Materials Challenges to Applications in Robotics".

Finally, to round off the week, Nikolay Popov defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Impact of nonionic stabilizers and ionic solutes on liquid crystal shell stability and defect configuration", on Friday, 29 August.

Häerzlech Gléckwonsch fir eis dräi néi Doktoren!/Félicitations à nos trois nouveaux docteurs!/Congratulations to our three new doctors!

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We're excited to share that the tenth edition of the Bandol Summer School on Liquid Crystals will be happening 24–30 September in Bandol, France!

This is a small, intimate, interactive summer school in Bandol, a seaside town on Mediterranean coast of France (between Toulon and Marseille), focusing on many aspects of liquid crystals, from optics and physics to the chemistry of liquid crystals. It is organized by Jan and a number of our collaborators (Giusy Scalia from the University of Luxembourg; Per Rudquist from Chalmers; Sven Lagerwall from the LC Lab Bandol; Johanna Bruckner, Frank Giesselmann, and Stefan Jagiella from the University of Stuttgart; and Daniel Krüerke from Klinikum Arlesheim), a group of researchers who are very passionate about liquid crystals. It's a small summer school, with limited space available, but a great opportunity for learning and enjoying the Côte d'Azur. Despite the timing, the end of September in the south of France can be very pleasant and mild.

For more details, please check the Summer School website. We hope to see some/many of you in Bandol!

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Last week, Jan, Tadej, and Alejandro all presented at the "Isaac Newton Institute Workshop on the Mathematics, Mechanics, and Applications of Soft Matter", hosted by Prof. Apala Majumdar and Dr. Prabakaran Rajamanickam, at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. This was a small workshop on many aspects of liquid crystals and soft matter in general: Jan presented some based on our work on liquid crystal elastomers, while Alejandro presented on direct programming of the director in LCE sheets and Tadej presented on acoustic activation of nematic tactoids.

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Jan and Larry attended this year's European Liquid Crystal Conference in Prague, hosted by the Czech Academy of Sciences! Jan presented on some of Najiya's and Nikolay's work related to artificial vasculature with liquid crystal elastomer tubes (recently published), while Larry presented on some of his previous work. We also got the chance to explore and enjoy Prague, the place where liquid crystals were first discovered by Friedrich Reinitzer.

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It is our pleasure to welcome back Rijeesh Kizhakidathazhath (approx. "kee-rah-kee-dah-tah-ra-tuh") to the ESMP group!

Originally from Kerala, India, Rijeesh did his Ph.D. in Life Science at Hokkaido University in Japan before moving to Kyushu University for a postdoc. He first came to ESMP in 2018, stayed with us for five years, then moved to the group of Arri Priimägi at Tampere University in Finland. He has since returned to Luxembourg to work on many of our chemistry-heavy projects, such as BriCE, ALCEMIST, and COSAMOS, with a focus on polymerizable liquid crystals for sensing and detection purposes.

Rebienvenue, Rijeesh!

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