There are some works still in progress due to the migration (it turns out upgrading the program we used to manage the website meant quite a bit of effort was needed to transfer everything), but it's a good time to refresh many things, to update things, and to make a somewhat different and more mobile-friendly experience. We also now have a dedicated "Alumni" section filled with alumni resources for previous group members (separate from the internal pages for current group members) and are working on updating the details about the research that we do.

There will be further changes implemented as we work on getting the new website fully set up, so please be patient, and please feel free to send us any feedback if you have any. We hope you enjoy the new ESMP site!

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• We recently have had several publications go online: one as a collaboration between David Walba's and Apala Majumdar's group (with group alumni Anjali and Mitch) in Soft Matter; one with Danièle Waldmann-Diederich's group at TU Darmstadt in Structural Health Monitoring; and one in Physical Review E with Apala Majumdar's group as well on the dynamics of liquid crystal shells.
• In collaboration with Eugene Terentjev of the University of Cambridge and Maria Helena Godinho of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Jan recently was awarded an ERC Synergy grant for their proposal ALCEMIST on making more sustainable liquid crystal elastomers from cellulose. This is a big project that we're looking forward to, and more details on this will come in the new year. (This also means we'll probably be posting positions soon!)
• As group members prepare to leave, we also will be passing the mantle of certain roles onto other people, and we now have a new website coordinator! Larry Honaker, our recently rejoined postdoc, will be handling website content and management for the foreseeable future; this also means that the website will soon be overhauled with a new version to hopefully launch by the end of the year.