We look forward to seeing some/many of you at the next German Liquid Crystal Conference in Essen in 2027! (Or other conferences, wherever they show up.)

/LWH/

P.S. A special congratulations goes to our group members Tanja Avsievich and Miriam Fischer (pictured) for winning one of the poster prizes!

Yvonne is a recently graduated Physics Ph.D. who joins us from Prof. Chinedum Osuji's group at the University of Pennsylvania. She joins us within the ALCEMIST project as a postdoc working at the intersection of theory and experiments, combining her theoretical knowhow with the many experiments in the project (and especially on fluid flow).

Originally from Georgia (the country), Amina joins us after her Ph.D. research in the group of Dr. Anne Jantschke at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, where she worked with cellulose extracted from dinoflagellates. Her role will be as the main chemist on the ALCEMIST project, working to develop the chemical tools and protocols to create cellulose-based liquid crystal elastomeric materials.

Mónica is the CEO of our spin-off company Trace Crystal and has joined ESMP as a visiting scientist to work further on developing the technology fueling the innovations at the company. (Hakam will still be with us, but in a different role.)


Häerzlech Wëllkomm!

/LWH/

This year was quite busy (four Ph.D. defenses, among other things), and next year looks to be differently busy, but in a good way. While we say farewell to some of our (long-time) group members, we welcomed some new ones, welcomed back some others, and got started on two big new projects (ALCEMIST and BriCE). While it's always hard to predict what the new year will bring, we're definitely excited to see what's ahead.

See you next year!

/LWH/

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 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!

\LWH\

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!

\LWH\

• 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.