Archive for the ‘Board News’ Category

Congratulations to Professor Martina Stenzel

Professor Martina Stenzel, from The University of New South Wales and one of our excellent Scientific Editors, has been elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science!

As a world-leading researcher in polymer chemistry and its applications, she has provided vital support to Materials Horizons by upholding the stringent requirements of exceptional significance.

Here in a video recorded for the Australian Academy of Sciences, she discusses her research and motivations: https://youtu.be/NBD6L5dj_dc 

Check out some of her recent articles:

Spatially resolved coding of λ-orthogonal hydrogels by laser lithographyChem. Commun., 2018, 54, 2436-2439

Entry of nanoparticles into cells: the importance of nanoparticle propertiesPolym. Chem., 2018, 9, 259-272

Penetration and drug delivery of albumin nanoparticles into pancreatic multicellular tumor spheroidsJ. Mater. Chem. B, 2017, 5, 9591-9599

The living dead – common misconceptions about reversible deactivation radical polymerizationMater. Horiz., 2016,3, 471-477

 

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Congratulations to our Highly Cited board members!

We are delighted to have many world-leading materials science researchers on our Editorial Board and on our Advisory Board, helping to guide Materials Horizons as a premier journal publishing first reports of exceptional significance.

Many have been recognized in Clarivate Analytics’ recently published 2017 Highly Cited Researchers list!

Congratulations from the Materials Horizons team to…

…Editorial Board members

…and Advisory Board members

  • Paul Blom, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany
  • Yong Cao, South China University of Technology, China
  • Naomi Halas, Rice University, USA, Rice University, USA
  • Martin Heeney, Imperial College London, UK
  • Taeghwan Hyeon, Seoul National University, South Korea
  • René Janssen, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
  • Susumu Kitagawa, Kyoto University, Japan
  • Frederik Krebs, Elite Science, Denmark
  • Nathan Lewis, California Institute of Technology, USA
  • Bin Liu, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University, USA
  • John A Rogers, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
  • Yi Xie, University of Science and Technology of China, China
  • Peidong Yang, University of California, Berkeley, USA
  • Shu-Hong Yu, University of Science and Technology of China, China
  • Dongyuan Zhao, Fudan University, China

Click on their names to check out some of their most recently published work in Materials Horizons.

If you think you might have some work that represents a brand new concept of exceptional significance then get in touch on materialshorizons-rsc@rsc.org

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Crystallizing Ideas on Amorphous MOFs in Kyoto – A Short Term Visit

Materials Horizons Community Board member Dr Thomas Bennett tells us about a research trip he recently took to Kyoto, Japan which was funded by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science short term fellowship.

Tom started a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge in 2016, along with a visiting adjunct professor position at The Wuhan University of Technology. He also holds a visiting scientist position at CSIRO Melbourne. In 2017/2018, Tom is also Director of Studies for Materials Science, at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. He has been fortunate enough to receive the EPSRC post-doctoral prize (2012) and the Panalytical award for an outstanding contribution to X-ray diffraction (2013).

 

His latest research on the discovery of the first liquid metal-organic-framework was featured in Chemistry World earlier this month.

 

You recently spent a month in Kyoto, Japan visiting the group of Professor Satoshi Horike and Professor Susumu Kitagawa on a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) short term post-doctoral fellowship. What motivated you to consider making this journey?

The research of my group is focused on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are sponge-like compounds formed by networks of inorganic ‘bricks’ linked organic ligands. However, we place an emphasis on the amorphous, or non-crystalline state, and specifically MOF-liquids and melt quenched glasses. The latter is the first new family of glass-formers discovered since the 1970s, and has been gathering much attention.

The group based in the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (ICeMS) is world renowned for excellence in the field of coordination polymers, and are also interested in the glassy and liquid states of hybrid polymeric systems. I’ve met both Satoshi and Susumu on multiple occasions at conferences, and we share the same desire to broaden the field and investigate the non-crystalline domain. We made a conscious decision to take the time to set up a lasting collaborative relationship between our two groups, given our common research interests. This was made easier by the fact we get along extremely well and we can be open about our research with one another!

 

How did you go about applying for the JSPS fellowship? Do you have any tips for others who might be thinking of applying as well?

The application form is short and easy to fill out – and the JSPS office in London is extremely helpful. There are several deadlines per year, and your Japanese proposed host institution will guide you through the process if unsure. I’d strongly encourage anyone interested in a stay with a Japanese Institution to get in touch with a local contact and discuss the possibilities.

 

What was the focus of the research that you carried out in Japan?

We focused on the links between coordination polymers and MOFs in the non-crystalline domain, and carried out some experiments aimed at understanding the chemical opportunities and variability in the area. We also have set up our two groups to work together experimentally, and samples should start to be exchanged soon!

 

Do you have any exciting results or collaborations planned in the future as a result? Are there any publications we should keep an eye out for?

We do! Aside from some promising early experimental results which are being followed up upon now, we hope to be able to provide our thoughts on how the non-crystalline coordination polymer and metal-organic field will develop in the long run. We’ve had some excellent advice on how to do this along the way, which will hopefully make it an enjoyable read when it comes together!

 

What impact do you think this experience will have on you and your research in the future?

The Royal Society University Research Fellowship that I am extremely fortunate to have, offers me freedom to explore the real edges and interfaces of science as it evolves, and there is no doubt that the exchange will benefit both our research groups – be it through student exchanges or sharing our different experimental capabilities.

I’m currently looking for new students and members, full details of which can be found on the group website: https://tdbennettgroup.wordpress.com/.

Personally, the experience was invaluable. I am busy building up my group as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, and it’s really valuable to be able to learn from Satoshi, who is further on in his career. Long term planning, strategy and research environment is particularly important.

 

What were the best and most challenging aspects of your month away?

Well, the research first and foremost! Aside from that, Kyoto is simply a stunning city, and a bike is absolutely the best way to get around it. Waking up with sunrise at 6am and cycling around beautiful gardens, temples and cobbled lanes gives you a real taste of peace and quiet before the day really gets going! One of my hobbies is travelling – seeing beautiful sights, learning about different cultures, meeting new people and (especially) eating wonderful cuisines. In all cases, Kyoto was perfect.

As always when you are away from home, the occasional loneliness could have been an issue – you always want to share the best experiences with somebody. This was never an issue in Kyoto. Alongside my hosts, I’m particularly grateful to Prof. Shuhei Furukawa, Dr. Sanjog Nagarkar, Dr. Jet Lee, Dr. Gavin Craig and Ms. Azuma for making me feel so welcome!

My partner, Helena, also joined me for a week in the middle of the stay, and we took the opportunity to visit the mountainous Hida region.

 

Are you attending any conferences or events next year where our readers might meet you?

I will be at EuroMOF 2017 in Delft in late October, and then giving an inorganic seminar in Berkeley with Prof. Omar Yaghi in January 2017. Beyond that, I’m part of the organising team for the Annual UK MOF Symposium, which will be held at the University of Southampton on the 9th and 10th April 2018. I will be back in Japan for the ICCC 2018 in Sendai, early August, and then in New Zealand for the biannual MOF conference in December 2018.

I’ve recently gotten into Twitter, so follow me @thomasdbennett for a rough idea of my whereabouts!

 

And finally, what is the one piece of career-related advice that you wish you’d received as an early-career scientist?

I’ve had the immense privilege of working with many great scientists (too many to name them all!) who have supported me no end, including Prof. Tony Cheetham, Prof. David Keen, Prof. Andrew Goodwin, Dr Nick Bampos and Prof. Dirk De Vos. Dr. Ross Forgan, University of Glasgow, is a Royal Society Research Fellow about 5 years on from me and he has been great as well.

A new idea and a novel area always help, although it’s easy for me to say now! I think that as long as you look after your students, appreciate the value of your collaborators, stay grounded and keep a smile on your face, then you will be able to remain grateful for what is a fantastic career.

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The new and expanded Materials Horizons Community Board

Last year, we launched the first early career researcher Board for Materials Horizons, the Community Board. Since then, these Board members have provided invaluable feedback regarding journal activities, as well as being ambassadors for the journal. Based on this success, we have expanded the Community Board, through requesting nominations from our Board members, as well as the wider academic community.

We are now delighted to announce the new and expanded Materials Horizons Community Board. Many of our original Board members from last year are continuing to serve for a second term, and now the Board consists of an international set of 33 researchers at different stages of their early careers, ranging from PhD candidates to Associate Professors.

Read more about our Board members below. We have also introduced the Nanoscale Horizons Community Board, find out more here.

Sarit Agasti
Sarit received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Calcutta, in 2003 and then his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2005. Sarit went on to receive his PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst under the supervision of Professor Vincent M. Rotello. Since his PhD, he has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at both the Massachusetts General hospital-Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University working with Professor Ralph Weissleder and Professor Peng Yin, respectively. Sarit has now returned to India and is working as a Faculty fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. His lab is interested in engineering small molecules and programmable molecular materials to address challenges in bioimaging, specifically in super-resolution microscopy.
Athina Anastasaki
Athina received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She then undertook a PhD in Polymer Chemistry at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Professor David Haddleton. She then undertook the position of a Monash-Warwick Alliance Research Fellow in the research groups of Professor David Haddleton and Professor Thomas Davis, focusing on controlled living radical polymerization methods, mechanistic studies, photochemistry and sequence-controlled polymers. Currently, she is an Elings Fellow working alongside Professor Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Maartje Bastings
Maartje Bastings studied Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and graduated Cum Laude in the group of Prof. E. W. (Bert) Meijer, where she continued her Ph.D. program funded by a Toptalent Fellowship from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO). Her research focused on the understanding of multivalent binding mechanisms for directed targeting and the development of supramolecular biomaterials. She was awarded the University Academic Award in 2013 for best Ph.D. thesis at the TU/e. She moved to the Wyss Institute of Harvard University in Boston as a NWO Rubicon and Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. William M. Shih. She studies DNA as a programmable biomaterial to design immune responses and assemble into multimodal nanoparticles. In January 2017 she will start as tenure track Assistant Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at EPFL, Switzerland.
(more…)
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Nominations to Materials Horizons Community Board now open!

Last year, we announced the first ever early career researcher advisory board for Materials Horizons. This Board is unique in that it is made up of early career researchers, such as PhD students and postdocs, who are fundamental in the future development of the materials field.

Since then, the members of the Community Board have provided invaluable feedback and advice to the Editorial Office.

Based on its success so far, we are now looking to expand the Community Board.

Are you interested in helping shape a journal publishing cutting-edge research of exceptional significance? Do you have ideas on how high impact journals can engage and support early career researchers? If so, please get in touch!

Simply ask your Principal Investigator to submit your nomination with the information outlined in the documents below to materialshorizons-rsc@rsc.org.

If you have any questions at all, please contact materialshorizons-rsc@rsc.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

Materials Horizons Community Board – Call for Nominations



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Up close and personal with the Materials Horizons Community Board

Sarit Agasti Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, India
Sarit received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Calcutta, in 2003 and then his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2005. Sarit went on to receive his PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst under the supervision of Professor Vincent M. Rotello. Since his PhD, he has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at both the Massachusetts General hospital-Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University working with Professor Ralph Weissleder and Professor Peng Yin, respectively. Sarit has now returned to India and is working as a Faculty fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. His lab is interested in engineering small molecules and programmable molecular materials to address challenges in bioimaging, specifically in super-resolution microscopy. Some of his previously published work in Royal Society of Chemistry journals is below.

A photoactivatable drug–caged fluorophore conjugate allows direct quantification of intracellular drug transport
Sarit S. Agasti, Ashley M. Laughney, Rainer H. Kohler and Ralph Weissleder
Chem. Commun., 2013,49, 11050-11052, DOI: 10.1039/C3CC46089D

Direct photopatterning of light-activated gold nanoparticles
Chandramouleeswaran Subramani, Xi Yu, Sarit. S. Agasti, Bradley Duncan, Serkan Eymur, Murat Tonga and Vincent M. Rotello
J. Mater. Chem., 2011,21, 14156-14158, DOI: 10.1039/C1JM11035G

Athina Anastasaki Warwick University, UK
Athina received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She then undertook a PhD in Polymer Chemistry at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Professor David Haddleton. Athina is currently a Monash-Warwick Alliance Research Fellow in the research groups of Professor David Haddleton and Professor Thomas Davis, focusing on controlled living radical polymerization methods, mechanistic studies, photochemistry and sequence-controlled polymers. Some of her recently published work in Royal Society of Chemistry journals is below.

Photo-induced living radical polymerization of acrylates utilizing a discrete copper(II)–formate complex
Athina Anastasaki, Vasiliki Nikolaou, Francesca Brandford-Adams, Gabit Nurumbetov, Qiang Zhang, Guy J. Clarkson, David J. Fox, Paul Wilson, Kristian Kempe and David M. Haddleton
Chem. Commun., 2015,51, 5626-5629, DOI: 10.1039/C4CC09916H

Photoinduced sequence-control via one pot living radical polymerization of acrylates
Athina Anastasaki, Vasiliki Nikolaou, George S. Pappas, Qiang Zhang, Chaoying Wan, Paul Wilson, Thomas P. Davis, Michael R. Whittaker and David M. Haddleton
Chem. Sci., 2014,5, 3536-3542, DOI: 10.1039/C4SC01374C

(more…)
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Introducing the Materials Horizons Community Board

Materials Horizons is thrilled to announce that the first researchers have joined our Materials Horizons Community Board. This board is unique in that it is made up of early career researchers, such as PhD students and postdocs, that are fundamental in the future development of the materials field.

This board will help build relationships with the young researcher community, providing the editorial office with not only essential feedback and advice on the perception of the journal in their community but also education-focused initiatives that will benefit the materials community as a whole.

These engaged and enthusiastic researchers have been nominated by the Materials Horizons and Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B & C Editorial and Advisory Board. We received several excellent nominations and the successful candidates are:

  • Sarit Agasti – Jawarhal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research, India
  • Athina Anastasaki – Warwick University, UK
  • Robert Chapman – Imperial College London, UK
  • Chaohua Cui – Soochow University, China
  • Rebecca Gieseking – Northwestern University, USA
  • Peter Korevaar – Harvard University, USA
  • John Labram – University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
  • Tian-Yi Ma – University of Adelaide, Australia
  • Jaime Martín Pérez – Imperial College London, UK
  • Troy Townsend – St Mary’s College of Maryland, USA
  • Daiki Umeyama – Stanford University, USA
  • Mengye Wang – Xiamen University, China

Please join us in congratulating the new members of the Materials Horizons Community Board.

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Bruno Chaudret is our new Scientific Editor

Bruno Chaudret

Materials Horizons would like to welcome Bruno Chaudret as our newest Scientific Editor.

Bruno has a wealth of experience having co-authored over 400 publications and being the recipient of several prizes including the Gay-Lussac – Humboldt Prize and the Wilkinson Prize of the RSC. He graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris in 1975 and then went on to receive his Ph.D. from Imperial College London in 1977 with Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson. He was awarded the degree of a “Docteur ès Sciences” at the University of Toulouse in 1979.

He is now “Director of Research CNRS”, Director of the “Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie des Nano-Objets” in Toulouse and a member of the French Academy of Science since 2005.

His interests have been in the chemistry of hydride and dihydrogen organometallic complexes, and in the early 90s, he developed an organometallic method for the synthesis of metal or metal oxide nanoparticles.

We very much look forward to working with him!

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Our new Editorial Board Member Anna Balazs

Materials Horizons is delighted to welcome Anna Balazs as our new Editorial Board Member.

Anna is the Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Robert von der Luft Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her B.A. in physics at Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. in Materials Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral work in the Polymer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987. Her research involves developing theoretical and computational models to capture the behavior of polymeric materials, nanocomposites and multi-component fluids in confined geometries. Balazs served as the Chair of the Division of Polymer Physics of the APS (2000-2001), Co-Chair of the Spring MRS meeting (2000) and served on the APS Public Policy Committee. In addition, she is a Fellow of the APS.

Before joining Materials Horizons, Anna was a member of the Advisory Board for Soft Matter.

Her recent papers include:

Self-assembly of microcapsules regulated via the repressilator signaling network
Henry Shum, Victor V. Yashin and Anna C. Balazs
Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 3542-3549

Forming self-rotating pinwheels from assemblies of oscillating polymer gels
Debabrata Deb, Olga Kuksenok, Pratyush Dayal and Anna C. Balazs
Mater. Horiz, 2014, 1, 125-132

Chemo-responsive, self-oscillating gels that undergo biomimetic communication
Olga Kuksenok, Pratyush Dayal, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Victor V. Yashin, Debabrata Deb, Irene C. Chen, Krystyn J. Van Vliet and Anna C. Balazs
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2013, 42, 7257-7277

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Congratulations Professor Marder

On behalf of the Materials Horizons Editorial Office I would like to congratulate Professor Seth Marder, Chair of Materials Horizons, on his receipt of the MRS Mid-Career Researcher Award.

The Mid-Career Researcher Award is awarded for exceptional achievements and notable leadership in the materials field.  Seth Marder was awarded this honour for:

“For establishing fundamental relationships between the chemical structure of organic molecules and their optical and electronic properties, thereby profoundly impacting how the scientific community designs optimized molecular structures for use in nonlinear optical applications”


Seth Marder is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology with over 400 peer reviewed publications, the recipient of the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and is a fellow of multiple scientific communities, including the Royal Society of Chemistry.

More information about this award can be found here.

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