16 December 2024
Projects–Jan–BriCEWe are delighted to share that Jan's project BriCE (Novel Concrete
Bridge Spatially-Distributed Monitoring Through
Chromatic Liquid Crystal
Elastomers), a collaboration with Dr. Numa Bertola of the
Sustainable Concrete Structures group at the University of Luxembourg, was just funded by the University of Luxembourg
Institute for Advanced Studies! This four-year project will investigate further use of our mechanochromic liquid crystal elastomers to monitor the structural health of bridges, detecting cracks and failures as early as possible.

Not from BriCE, but from our recent publication with Danièle Waldmann-Schmidt's group on using mechanochromic LCEs for monitoring crack formation in concrete
Even more good news to end the year; stay tuned for further updates!
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Welcome Alejandro (left) and welcome back Larry (right)
This August we have two postdocs join us.
Alejandro will work on the LiCER (Liquid-crystal Elastomer Robotics) project, which aims to design and develop an instrumented actuator from liquid crystal elastomers to build an endoscope soft robot.
Larry did his Ph.D. in our group. After 4 years postdoc stay at Wageningen University & Research, he return to ESMP to work on the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action-funded project TECHSTILE, working to create wearable technology incorporating liquid crystal and liquid armor functionality.
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Welcome back Rebecca,
After one year, Rebecca finished her B.S. in Industrial Design and come back for an internship to help our group members construct equipment and experimental setups for various projects.
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