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Our Current ESMP Team
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Deniz Avşar
PhD CandidateDeniz earned her master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Turkey. During her master’s study, she worked on the synthesis and characterization of sensor microparticles templated from cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) to develop artificial photonic materials for the detection of volatile organic compounds. She joined the ESMP in September 2021 as a PhD candidate to work on the TRANSCEND project.
CURRENT PROJECT
TRANSCEND Project: Transforming autonomous navigation, swarm robotics and construction by encoding data into surfaces.
ORCiD
Lawrence (Larry) Honaker
Postdoctoral ResearcherLarry earned his M.S. in Chemical Physics from Kent State University and his Ph.D. in Physics from University of Luxembourg, where he was funded by the AFR project LIMEFLOW on the applications of microfluidics to characterise liquid crystals and liquid metals and incorporate them into fibres through wet spinning. After a postdoctoral stay in the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter at Wageningen University & Research, he returned to ESMP in August 2024 to work on the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action-funded project TECHSTILE, working to create wearable technology incorporating liquid crystal and liquid armor functionality.
CURRENT PROJECT
Tailoring and Extending Chemically-assisted Spinning to Textile Incorporating Liquid crystal-Enhanced functionality (TECHSTILE)
ORCiD
Alejandro Ibarra
Postdoctoral Researcher Alejandro obtained his Ph.D. in 2021 from University of Santiago of Chile. His thesis focused on the creation of methodologies to model, design and manufacture bio-inspired soft robots. He later worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the PMMH laboratory at the ESPCI University in Paris, where he developed numerical and experimental techniques to manufacture flat objects that transform in to 3D structures in response to external stimuli. He joined ESMP to develop the LiCER (Liquid-crystals Elastomer Robotics) project, which aims to design and develop an instrumented actuator from liquid crystal elastomers to build an endoscope soft robot.
CURRENT PROJECT
Liquid crystal Elastomer Robotics (LiCER)
ORCiD
Jan Lagerwall
PI & Group LeaderJan leads the Experimental Soft Matter Physics (ESMP) group. Check out his personal website below for details.
WEBSITE
CURRENT PROJECT
Teaching, advising, helping us (his group) publish papers & be better researchers
ORCiD
+352 46 66 44 6219
Xu Ma
PhD CandidateXu earned her master degree on science in physics at the University of Luxembourg, where she did her thesis in our group on “Spontaneous adsorption and self-organization of colloid particles at fluid interfaces”. She joined our group as part of the ECLIPSE project, working on using electrospray and controlled phase separation guided by confinement in droplets to make Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors (CSRs).
CURRENT PROJECT
ECLIPSE Project: Using electrospray and controlled phase separation to make Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors (CSRs)
ORCiD
Yosuke Pestana Nakamura
PhD Candidate Yosuke completed his Bachelor's degree and Master's degrees in physics at the University of Luxembourg. During his Master's thesis work, he worked with the REVEAL project on the development of liquid crystal polymer fibres, designed to exhibit mechanochromic response, employing a microfluidic wet spinning technique. He now works on the COSAMOS project to extend liquid crystal elastomer actuators to new systems.
CURRENT PROJECT
COSAMOS
Najiya
PhD CandidateNajiya earned her Masters from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali in India. Before joining the ESMP group, she worked on liquid crystal (LC) biosensing, synthesis and characterisation of LCs. Currently, she does her PhD with us under the "Physics meet Biology" scheme, specifically on research in liquid crystal elastomers for artificial vasculature for sustaining organoid growth.
CURRENT PROJECT
LC elastomers (ECLECTIC)
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Nikolay Popov
PhD CandidateNikolay earned his Masters in chemistry at Ivanovo State University, Russia. During his Masters he worked at the Nanomaterials Research Institute on the development of liquid crystal (LC) thin films bio-sensing technics. At ESMP Nikolay studied the bottom-up LC elastomer synthesis of shells and tubes using microfluidics. LC elastomer actuators tubes might be potentially useful in future as an artificial vasculature which improves vitality of organoids in vitro. He also contributed to the MiShell Zero Gravity experiments project. Starting from July 2021, Nikolay has continued his research at ESMP as a doctoral candidate with a new research project mainly devoted to improving LC shells stability and their use in bio-sensing applications.
CURRENT PROJECT
Liquid crystal shells as reporters of biomolecular adsorption events
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Zornitza ('Zory') Tosheva
Research Associate+352 46 66 44 6332
Zory is involved in several projects of the ESMP group, her current main focus being on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) self-assembly.
CURRENT PROJECT
CNC self assembly & film production
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Nicole Trouet
Administrative staffNicole helps our group in many ways: Administration, balancing our budgets, and purchasing all of our equipment.
Yansong Zhang
Postdoctoral ResearcherWith a broad background in various disciplines (polymer chemistry, chemical engineering and photonics), Yansong is a materials researcher specialised in light-responded elastomers and self-organizing polymer networks. He received his Master and PhD degree in chemical engineering from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. After that he did three-years post-doc in Prof. Chia-Rong Lee’s group in the department of photonics at same university to develop smart actuators, liquid crystal laser and planar optics. He attempts to synthesis anisotropic polymers with new functionalities and integrate them into optical devices to meet industrial and societal challenges. In January 2022 he became a member of ESMP and is working on to electrospinning fibers and Cholesteric Spherical Reflectors to make innovative pathogen sampling filters and reporters of biomolecular binding events.
CURRENT PROJECT
BIOFLICS: Bio-sensing the frugal way with liquid crystal spheres
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