• © 2017–2025 Jan Lagerwall and the ESMP Group 0

ALCEMIST

ESMP at ECLC!

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.

Jan PresentingLarry ESMP in PragueReinitzer

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Welcome Back, Rijeesh!

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

Rijeesh

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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Wëllkomm Chih-Chieh and Vijay!

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 on the LETZCOLOR project.

Vijay Varma

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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New Publications and New Horizons

A lot has been happening in ESMP since our last website update! To give a rundown:
  • 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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