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Alumni


Nina helped the ESMP group during her bachelor student in physics at University of Luxembourg, 2015-2016. She worked as a part-time student researcher, supporting other group members with various tasks, primarily dealing with cellulose nanocrystals.
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Nina Schwarz

Martin uses dielectric spectroscopy to characterize dispersions of gold nanoparticles in thermotropic liquid crystals. He is working on the FNR-funded project DISGONA. Click here or on his photo for his personal web site.

Tel: 6732. Click here to send him an e-mail.
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Martin Urbanski

Ji Hyun did a brief post-doc in the group within the scope of the INTERACT project, working with liquid crystals containing carbon nanoparticles. She now works as a post-doc in the group of Dr. Giusy Scalia. Click here to send her an e-mail.
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Ji Hyun Park

Matthias did his M.Sc. thesis (defended 20 May 2016) in the group, working mainly with Martin Urbanski as his advisor, focusing on dielectric spectroscopic investigation of the relaxation processes of nematics doped with nanoparticles.
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Mathias Bourg

Johanna worked as a post-doc in the group from August 2015 to March 2016. Her topic was liquid crystalline suspensions of cellulose nanocrystals, focusing on the importance of the solvent properties. From May 2016 she is working at Bosch in Stuttgart, Germany.
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Johanna Bruckner

Dae Kyom worked with electrospinning and polymerization of liquid crystals while in the SNM lab at GSCST, Seoul National University. He transferred to the NMEC lab of Prof. Yuanzhe Piao when Jan moved to Luxembourg in 2014.
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Dae Kyom Kim

Jong Hwan's Master thesis (defended 18 December 2014) at Seoul National University thesis dealt with the preparation and characterization of carbon nanotube-polyvinylalcohol composite films.
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Jong Hwan Lee

Stefan defended his Ph.D. thesis “Liquid Crystalline Carbon Nanotube Suspensions: From Unique Challenges to Unique Properties” (download it from the "Research" section) at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg on 4th of July 2013. His project was a collaboration with the group of Prof. Giusy Scalia.
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Stefan Schymura

Sarah's diploma work at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (defended 16 September 2009) was on carbon nanoparticle dispersion in surfactant solutions and lyotropic liquid crystals. Currently she is a Ph.D. student in Prof. Ralf Stannarius' group in Magdeburg.
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Sarah Dölle

Duckhee worked part time in the ESMP group as a student researcher, dealing with microfluidics and colloids.
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Duckhee Kim

After doing his B.Sc. thesis (defended 19th of December 2014) in our group, working together with JungHyun on microfluidic production of liquid crystal shells, Kevin came back to do his M.Sc. thesis. He worked with Rao on making liquid crystal elastomer shells with well-defined director fields, and investigated their mechanical actuation properties. He defended his M.Sc. thesis on May 22, 2017.

Click here to send him an e-mail.
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Kevin Reguengo de Sousa

Benjamin did his B.Sc. thesis (defended 22 May 2015) in the ESMP group, using microfluidics to make liquid crystal shells and to study them under varying conditions.
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Benjamin Henx

Martin was a Ph.D. student at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, synthesizing tailormade stabilizers for dispersing carbon nanotubes in thermotropic liquid crystals (collaboration with Prof. Carsten Tschierske). After some successful years as academic researcher he changed to a job in industry.
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Martin Kühnast

Sammy did his M.Sc. thesis (defended 22 January 2016) in the group, dealing with liquid crystalline self-assembly and kinetic arrest in cellulose nanocrystal suspensions, as well as the production of solid photonic crystal films by drying the suspensions.
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Sammy Wagner

Hsin-Ling defended her Ph.D. thesis “Microfluidic Produced Liquid Crystalline Shells: Self-assembled structures in nematic and smectic shells” (download it from the "Research" section) on 25th of September 2013. Her project was a collaboration with the group of Rudolf Zentel at University of Mainz.
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Hsin-Ling Liang

Eva's Ph.D. thesis (download it from the "Research" section) is entitled “Electrospun Polymer - Liquid Crystal Composite Fibres”. She defended it on the 16th of April 2013 at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.
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Eva Enz

Minsik made gas sensors based on liquid crystal-functionalized electrospun fibers while in the SNM lab at GSCST, Seoul National University. He transferred to the NMEC lab of Prof. Yuanzhe Piao when Jan moved to Luxembourg in 2014.
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Minsik Hwang

YooMee did her M.Sc. thesis (defended on 12th of June 2015) in the group, electrospinning fibers with multiple cores. After Jan's move to Luxembourg she was co-supervised by him and Prof. Changsoon Kim at GSCST, Seoul National University.
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YooMee Kye

Christina Schütz

Post-doc Researcher
Christina obtained her PhD in materials chemistry from Stockholm University in Sweden. She explored the surface modification, and self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals.

Anshul Sharma

Post-doc Researcher
Anshul earned her PhD in Chemical Physics in December 2015 after having worked in Dr. Torston & Dr. Elda Hegmanns' research groups at the Liquid Crystal Institute in Kent University, Ohio, USA. In our group she worked on electrospinning LC elastomers for tensile based selective reflection sensors.

Benjamin Dupas

Visiting Intern
Benjamin was a French student in an engineering school who did a 6 month-internship in the ESMP group. His work in the group consisted of producing and characterizing CNC suspensions and films under the supervision of Manos.

Joana Ferreira

B.Sc. Student Intern

JungHyun Noh

PhD Defended - 03/2018
JungHyun worked with microfluidics and other methods for creating liquid crystal droplets and shells. She studied their optical properties and topological defect arrangements in different phases as part of the FNR funded ULISCO project.

Andy Schanen

M.Sc. Student Intern
Andy was a Physics Master student under the direction of Larry. He was studying equilibrium and dynamic interfacial tension measurements between aqueous surfactant solutions and liquid crystals. He was working towards the automation of this process using image analysis techniques.

Ursa Ursic

Intern
Urša was a bachelors student studying physics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She was doing a six-month internship with ESMP group. She worked mainly with Rao on a custom-made dual confocal microscope. The aim was to obtain controlled polymerisation on reactive mesogens dispersed in the nematic liquid crystal shell using UV laser.
 

Lionel Fru

M.Sc. Student Intern
Lionel was a masters student studying physics at the University of Luxembourg. He was studying the process of film formation from evaporating sessile droplets of aqueous suspensions of CNCs under the direction of Manos.

Camila Honorato

PhD Candidate
Camila made CNCs (cellulose nanocrystals) suspended in water, and studies their lyotropic liquid crystal self-assembly and its competition with the tendency of the nanorods to get stuck in a jammed state. She was working on the FNR-funded project MISONANCE.

Lawrence Honaker

PhD Candidate
Larry worked on the jetting of liquid metals in co-flowing systems with a view to their incorporation into polymer fibers under the AFR project LIMEFLOW.
RESEARCH GATE

Andy Stoffel

Master Student
Andy earned his B.Sc in Physics from the University of Luxembourg. He was doing his master's project on "Tailor made-defects for tuning the actuation response in liquid crystal elastomer shells".

Anjali Sharma

PhD Candidate
She worked on creating liquid crystal shells and using them for bio-sensing applications  
RESEARCH GATE

Tabea Pfister

Intern
Tabea is a master student at the University of Stuttgart. She is in Luxembourg for an internship for 2.5 months. She was working on the fractionation of Chitin-based nanocrystals, which tend to form a chiral nematic phase. Fractionation is basically separating polydisperse nanocrystals into fractions with longer and with shorter particles.

Emmanouil (‘Manos’) Anyfantakis

Postdoctoral Researcher
Manos earned his MSc in applied molecular spectroscopy after writing a thesis on the thermodynamics and phase behavior of organosilica nanoparticles. He earned his PhD in Chemistry in 2010 at the Univ. of Crete & FORTH, in Greece where he investigated light-induced pattern formation in polymer solutions. During his phd studies, Manos spent one year in MPIP, Mainz, Germany, in the group of H.-J. Butt. Following his military service, Manos returned to MPIP as a postdoc in 2011, to explore the dynamic wetting of surfactant solutions. In 2013, Manos joined the group of D. Baigl at ENS, Paris, France where he initiated projects concerning various optofluidic and patterning phenomena, in part thanks to an independent Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship that he was awarded.
Manos became a member of the ESMP group in July 2017, and explored how simultaneously occurring phenomena (e.g. hydrodynamic flows, kinetic arrest, LC structure formation) affect the structure of films formed after the evaporation of cellulose nanocrystal dispersions.
WEBSITE

Claudia Kieffer

Bachelor student
Claudia did her thesis in the ESMP group together with Deniz. They worked on finding the refractive indices of nematic polymerised liquid crystal mixture.

Lenka Vitkova

Intern
Lenka is currently a PhD student at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic. She is focusing on fabrication of biopolymer based 3D scaffolds for cells cultivation. Here at University of Luxembourg she spent two months with us, during which she investigated the liquid crystalline behavior of collagen solutions, and utilized these properties in electrospun fibers.

Shameek Vats

PhD Candidate
Shameek joined the ESMP group in July 2017 to work on the INTERACT project. He worked on finding suitable textile-grade like polymers for further stabilizing liquid crystal cores in electrospun LC-fiber mats.

Rukhsar Ahmed

Master Student
Rukhsar received his bachelor degree from University of Gujrat, Pakistan. Currently, he is doing his master in University of Luxembourg. In our group he investigated to make fibers by using frugal science by electrospinning technique

Axel Lorant

Bachelor Student
Axel did his bachelor thesis in our group. He investied the isotropic-nematic phase transition of liquid crystal oligomers dissolved in a solvent as it evaporates. Furthermore, he also studied the impact of the concentration of chiral dopant on the ground-state color of cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs).

Hakam Agha

Postdoctoral Researcher
Hakam earned his Bachelor’s degree from the Lebanese University in Beirut, and his Masters degree from Henri Poincaré university in Nancy France (currently known as University of Lorraine). He later earned his PhD in material science from the university of Strasbourg in France under the guidance of Prof. Yves Galerne in 2013. Afterwards, he joined the group of Dr. Christian Bahr as a postdoctoral researcher in Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization in Göttingen, Germany, where he studied liquid crystals flow in PDMS based microfluidics. Hakam is worked in our group on a project funded by the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) where he is investigating the optical behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal droplets for object detection.

Yong Geng

Postdoctoral Researcher
Yong received his Bachelor and Master degrees in Physics from China, and then his PhD in 2013 in materials science from New University of Lisbon, Portugal, in the group of Prof. Maria Helena Godinho, where he did a short post-doc as well. After that he did a one-year post-doc in Prof. Ralf Stannarius’s group in Magdeburg University and worked with Alexey Eremi, during which he had a chance to spend two months in Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Hungary and collaborated with Dr. Tamás Börzsönyl and Dr. Péter Salamon, funded by COST ic1208. From July 2015 to September 2017, he worked as post-doc in our group, mainly focusing on the studying of selective reflections from from Cholesteric liquid crystal shells. And came back on 2019 and continue worked on what he worked before. His research interest covers ordering-discording process of polymers and liquid crystals, phase transitions; optical properties of Cholesteric liquid crystals; microfluidics; liquid crystalline networks; self-assembly of functional polymers, liquid crystals and particles.

Mitch Magrini

Visitor
Mitch was visiting us from Boulder, CO (USA) where he is Ph.D. student in chemistry working on synthesizing novel liquid crystalline materials to test the limits of packing and frustration of molecules in LC phases. During his short visit, he worked on polymerization of LC shells.

Venkata S.R. Jampani

Postdoctoral Researcher
His research focused on topological defects in liquid crystal elastomeric shells and their applications, and liquid crystal shells, droplets and their self-assembly. He was working on the ERC funded project "INTERACT".

Majdi Assaid

Bachelor Student
Majdi studied light scattering from polymers templated from cholesteric liquid crystals, after they are immersed in transparent media of different refractive indices. In particular, he focused on cholesterics with short enough pitch to selectively reflect light in the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, as well as long enough pitch for the selective reflection to be in the infrared (IR) spectrum.

Katrin schelski

PhD Candidate
Katrin earned her MSc in Analytical Chemistry and Quality Assurance from the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (HBRS), Germany. Before joining ESMP she worked on liquid crystal-based gas sensing and furthermore visited the group as an intern. Her project is about the potential of electrospun, liquid crystal-filled polymer fibers for the quantitative detection of volatile organic compounds.

Rijeesh Kizhakidathazhath

Postdoctoral Researcher
Rijeesh earned his Ph.D. in Life Science from Hokkaido University, Japan under the guidance of Prof. Nobuyuki Tamaoki with the thesis entitled “Dynamic induction of enantiomeric excess from a prochiral azobenzene dimer under circularly polarized light”. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the group of Prof. Hirotsugu Kikuchi at Kyushu University, Japan and his research focused on the development of high-performance liquid crystal / polymer composites using unique molecular designs. He joined the ESMP group in June 2018 and worked on the production of polymerizable cholesteric liquid crystal shells for making authentication or reflector tags. He also preparaed of cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers for the applications in LC-based wearable technology.

Rebecca Warga

Intern
Rebecca graduated with her B.S. in industrial Design from New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is aiding group members construct equipment and experimental setups for various projects. She worked on automating continuous Cholesteric Spherical Reflector(CSR) production in order to manufacter larger quantities with less human intervention.

Catherine G. Reyes

Postdoctoral Researcher
Catherine used coaxial electrospinning to produce responsive fibers functionalized with liquid crystals in the core. She also studied the complex relationships between LC & polymer solutions when exposed to the spinning process. The ultimate aim to use these LC-fibers in autonomous wearable tech. devices. She was working on the ERC funded INTERACT project.

Vanessa Schmidt-Barbé

Group Assistant
Vanessa was our group’s secretary who helped us balance our budgets & with purchasing all of our equipment (extremely important!)

Ashutosh Meelu

Master Student
Ashutosh investigated the roles of anisotropic deswelling and osmotic expansion, respectively, in LCE shells, non-chiral nematics that acquire negative order parameter as a result, as well as short-pitch chiral nematics.

Xiang Zhang

Master Student
She did her master thesis about "Preparation of liquid crystal shells by controlled phase separation in droplets" here.

Yosuke Pestana Nakamura

Bachelor Student
Yosuke did his bachelor thesis in our group. He studied the small-scale limit of cholesteric spherical reflectors (CSRs). In particular, he prepared liquid crystal droplets by different methods, turning them into solids by polymerization and then characterizing them locally, using a polarizing microscope, as well as macroscopically, using cameras and external illuminators.

Valentin Kengawe

Bachelor student
Valentin started his bachelor in Brussels at ULB and he came to Luxembourg for finishing his bachelor and switching from a theoretical to a experimental focused degree. His project in the group is to do a computer simulation of evaporative flows during cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer preparation using OpenFoam

Emily Ostermann

Visitor
Emily is a visiting PhD student from Prof. Emily Davidson's research group in Princeton University, USA, where she studies the phase behavior and self-assembly of liquid crystalline (LC) oligomers of precise length and sequence. In the ESMP 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.