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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Congrats to Najiya and Jan for their recent publication, "Oligomer-Derived Photoresponsive Liquid Crystal Elastomers with Biocompatible Operating Temperature", in Advanced Optical Materials! In this work, they demonstrate liquid crystal elastomers capable of responding to light at temperatures close to body temperature, a step towards the aim of the ECLECTIC project of producing liquid crystal elastomer actuators for artificial vasculature. Accepted just in time for Najiya's recent PhD defense, it's now finally online for all to see.

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This March, we (Jan and Larry) got the chance to participate for the first time in the 2025 Science Is Wonderful fair hosted by the European Commission at the Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika (Royal Museum for Central Africa) in Tervuren, Belgium! It was a great opportunity to show students of all ages the beauty of structural color, liquid crystals, and a taste of the research we do in our group.

As tired as we are after the event, it was definitely rewarding and exciting, and we're looking forward to the next edition.

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It is our pleasure to welcome our latest ESMP group members, Dr. Chih-Chieh Chien and Dr. Vijaykumar (Vijay) Varma!

Originally from Taiwan, where she did her Ph.D., Chih-Chieh will be working on the BIOFLICS project to improve biological sensing with functionalized liquid crystal droplets. She will be taking over Yansong's role, as Yansong will be moving more towards working with Phil Dale's Laboratory for Energy Materials on the LETZCOLOR project.

After doing his Master's in India and his Ph.D. in Singapore, Vijay comes to us from a previous position at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology. He's the first hire on the ALCEMIST project, in which he'll be working on the next generation of sustainable liquid crystal oligomers and elastomers derived from cellulose.

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We here at ESMP want to congratulate the latest Docteur de l'Université du Luxembourg en Chimie and our latest PhD graduate, Dr. Najiya! Najiya successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, Fabrication and Tailoring of Liquid Crystalline Elastomer Tubes: Toward Bio-Compatible Microactuators for Organoid Cultures, on 10 March.

Häerzlech Gléckwonsch/Félicitations/Herzlich Glückwunsch, Najiya!


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Eight years after the launch of the ESMP Website 2.0, we've decided it's finally time to launch website 3.0!

There are some works still in progress due to the migration (it turns out upgrading the program we used to manage the website meant quite a bit of effort was needed to transfer everything), but it's a good time to refresh many things, to update things, and to make a somewhat different and more mobile-friendly experience. We also now have a dedicated "Alumni" section filled with alumni resources for previous group members (separate from the internal pages for current group members) and are working on updating the details about the research that we do.

There will be further changes implemented as we work on getting the new website fully set up, so please be patient, and please feel free to send us any feedback if you have any. We hope you enjoy the new ESMP site!

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Jan was recently interviewed by Hanna Siemaszko for the SciLux podcast, in which he discusses how liquid crystals can be used to revolutionize research and technology in many fields and how this ties to our research in ESMP! You can have a listen through the link or through many other podcast providers.

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As our first post for 2025, it is our pleasure to welcome our newest group members, Dr. Tadej Emeršič and Mr. Churchill Agoni, to ESMP!

Originally from Slovenia, where he completed his Ph.D., Tadej comes to us from the University of Chicago, where he worked as a postdoc in the group of Juan de Pablo. He joins us on the INVISIMARK project, a project in cooperation with the Luxembourg Ministry of Defense, in which he'll be working with us for (at least) the next year and a half on the use of CSRs for secure identification purposes.

Churchill comes from Nigeria and joins us after his Master's studies in Photonics at the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu. He'll be working on the SHADOW project, a collaboration with the University of Ljubljana, on studying ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals under confinement.



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