Soft Matter Blog

10-12 May, 2017, University of Luxembourg

Soft Matter is pleased to support Twisted, a two-day conference on the physics, chemistry and applications of cholesteric lyotropic liquid crystals developing in colloidal suspensions of chiral nanorods.

The motivation for the conference is the rapidly growing interest in liquid crystals formed by nanocrystals of cellulose or chitin, filamentous viruses, carbon nanotubes and similar rod-like nanoparticles in suspensions in water or other isotropic solvents, and topics will be covered in four sessions:

27 March 2017, SCI Belgrave Sq, London, UK

This one day meeting in London will focus on recent advances in colloid and interfacial science as a route to materials and processes with societal value, with distinguished speakers both from industry and academia. The meeting will close with the McBain Lecture, awarded annually by the RSC/SCI Joint Colloids Group to recognize a rising star in colloid and interface science.

This year’s awardee is Dr João Cabral from Imperial College London, for his outstanding work on the thermodynamics and assembly of colloid and polymer mixtures, and the design of functional materials via interfacial instabilities. An enthusiast of scattering, his team and collaborators have pioneered the use of neutron and X-rays to study flow processing of complex fluids in complex microfluidic flows.

To see the programme and register, click here

Registration from £10, 11am start.

Invited speakers:

• Dr João Cabral (Imperial College London), McBain Lecture: “Interfacial instabilities in frontal photopolymerisation, microflow and complex fluid processing”
• Prof Tom McLeish FRS (Durham University): “Molecular viscoelasticity in spaces of different dimensionality”
• Prof Dame Julia Higgins FRS (Imperial College London): “Soft mixtures, thermodynamics and interfacial structures”
• Dr Eric Robles (Procter & Gamble): “The Role of Colloid Chemistry in Every Breakthrough Innovation in Industry”
• Dr Lionel Porcar (Institut Laue Langevin): “Recent advances in flow-SANS for colloidal and interfacial science”
• Dr Alex Routh (University of Cambridge): “Strength development during consolidation in drying films”
• Prof Sidney Nagel (University of Chicago): “Pattern formation”