2024
October: First PhD student joins the group! Myles (Mylo) Bishop will be developing new sustainable biopolymer formulations for (bio-)printing gradient scaffolds to mimic hard-soft biological interfaces. 4 UG students join for their 3rd year projects; Brendan Vernon-Bowyer, Ethan Hocking and Idris Hadrami will be understanding how to modify new low-cost, acoustic levitators to control acoustic field shapes and strengths. Rashid Al Subaey will be exploring polymeric hydrogels for cardiovascular tissue engineering applications.
September: Collaboration with Esther on branched copolymer surfactants and printable advanced material formulations. Patrick Spicer visiting Esther from UNSW and gives a talk in the School’s Fluid Mechanics Cluster Meeting.
July/August: Projects in formulation – 4D hydrogels & some new takes on microplastics.
June: A bundle of living soft matter arrives in the group – Leanora Rae Whitehead born 10/06 – naturally the rest of summer will be quite light in science.
May: SAXS experiments with Moira Lorenzo-Lopez from Professor Curran’s group on some synthetic mimics of the Vitreous Humour.
April: Niclas from Leibniz Institute for Materials visits the Complex Fluids Group and we tag along. Further filming in the labs for upcoming showcase of Esther’s research.
March: Dr Taikachi Watanabe (Okayama University) visits from Japan and gives first Soft Matter Seminar in the School of Engineering @ Liverpool. Chloe Glasheen joins as an MSc student working on new techniques for non-planar 3D printing of soft materials (with Dr Joe Forth in Chemistry/Physics).
February: Seminar from Eleanor Doman from Manchester on Hemodynamics in the Placenta – some incredible porous media experiments (with Anne Juel – Manchester) and modelling.
January: Snow in Sefton Park – Winnie (the Westie) goes nuts!
2023
December: Undergraduate student Jacob Keddy designs frame for multi-axis 3D printed acoustic levitator – exciting results expected 2024! Flow and pressure sensors arrive to explore water transport through hydrogels. First Christmas in Liverpool!
November: Imperial Lates Event with Andru, Liva, Luis (Imperial College, London) – more “Bite Sized Soft Matter”, this time edible alginate gel spheres to recreate an apple crumble, black forest gateux and mango lassi. Delicious! Paper accepted in PRL on Breath Figure Formation on acoustically levitated droplets.
October: Lots of scattering data fitting – a “quiet” month…
September: Visit to Professor Annel Juel’s Laboratory (Manchester) to explore experimental methodologies for water transport in hydrogel membranes. Collaborators at Birmingham (Milsom & Pfrang) publish paper on water uptake on atmospheric aerosol proxy with acoustic levitation.
August: Commisioning experiments on a new temperature jump cell at ISIS. SAXS experiments at the Materials Innovation Factory @ The University of Liverpool.
July: First polymeric hydrogels made in the lab and lots of neutron scattering experiments at ISIS Pulsed Neutron & Muon Source. Collaborated with Adam Squires (Bath), Adam Milsom (Birmingham) and Christian Pfrang (Birmingham) on Levitation-SANS experiments and Luis Torquato & Joao Cabral (both Imperial College) on coupled microflow, in-line DLS and SANS experiments. Presentation on engineering of precision polymer colloids at UK Colloids 2023.
June: Will helps Liva (Imperial College) run “Bite Sized Soft Matter” in the Future Food Zone Live at the Great Exhbition Road Festival. Recipes from our live demonstration of how to make edible emulsions can be found here.
May: First bit of equipment arrives in the shared lab with the Complex Fluids Group. First MSc students join the group – Ajina Fathima & Sagarika Mohan
April: Moved to Liverpool & settled near Sefton Park (Winnie the Westie very much approves)
Soft Materials @ Liverpool 