The G.W. Gray Medal
Interested people attending the event talk to our LC experts.
The event took place at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, where the history of transportation in Glasgow surrounded our stall. We spent the day transporting museum visitors, away from the old subway carriages and buses, into the world of liquid crystals.
We had three main activities; a portable microscope focused on the liquid crystal display of an old iPad, a table of chiral nematic liquid crystal thermochromic sensors, and an isotropic droplet race. The portable microscope, purchased with money provided by the BLCS outreach fund, illuminated the pixels of the iPad. The detail of the sub-pixel domain was visible, and visitors focused the microscope on different colours on the iPad screen, causing an immediate and interactive change in the pixels displayed on the microscope. The thermochromic sensors allowed us to interactively move from the nematic phase into a chiral nematic phase. The colour changes induced by splatting a hand or fingering on the sensors were explained in terms of the unwinding of the helical order.
Our final exhibit, the excitingly named droplet race, took a slightly different and isotropic route. Akhshay had coated half of a glass plate with a hydrophobic coating made of silicon nanoparticles, and the other half was left uncoated. Children (and a few adults, including the BLCS chair, Nigel Mottram) had fun picking sides before dispensing droplets of food colouring onto their chosen side. The droplets on the hydrophobic side bounced to the finish line, while the droplets on the uncoated side turned into a slow-moving trickle and promptly lost the race.
We finally tied the liquid crystal and the droplets together, talking to visitors about our ongoing work on the Control of free-surface flow morphologies in anisotropic liquids.
Further information about our project can be found in the outreach article we published last year with Futurum (https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM287). Overall, the event was a great success, with around a hundred children, parents, BLCS Chairs, and adults with learning difficulties visiting our stall. We want to say a big thank you to the support of the BLCS and the EPRSC for allowing us to host this event.
Joseph Cousins (Joseph.Cousins@glasgow.ac.uk) and Akhshay Bhadwal (akhshay.bhadwal@ntu.ac.uk)
Information about the BLCS Outreach fund can be found on the BLCS webpages
We are pleased to announce that a one-day meeting will be held at the University of Birmingham on 20 June 2023 on the theme of “Liquid-Crystal Research in the 2020s”. The meeting, supported by the British Liquid Crystal Society (BLCS), is intended for early-stage researchers, primarily for PhD students, but also for post-doctoral research associates and researchers in industry, who are relatively new to the field of liquid-crystal research, irrespective of their academic disciplines.
In the absence of the BLCS Annual Training Workshop this year in the traditional format, some introductory materials for education and training will be made available to the participants on an online platform before the one-day meeting for a limited period. The one-day meeting (from 11 am to 5 pm) will provide opportunities for presenting posters and networking.
Confirmed speakers include:
Expressions of interest in the prescribed format (see the next page) are currently invited for attending this one-day meeting in June. Please email your expression of interest to blcs-atw@contacts.bham.ac.uk by 9 June 2023. Please send your expression of interest as soon as possible – places are limited.
Accepted participants will be notified shortly after the deadline. There are no registration fees for accepted participants.
The BLCS is now seeking nominations onto the steering committee. The following BLCS committee positions are now available:
Both nominees and nominators (proposer & seconder) must be members of the Society and the permission of the nominee must be obtained. Nominations should be made by email. The Nomination form can be found on the last page of this letter which you can download from this link: committee nominations.
The timeline for the election process is as follows:
The details of the online voting will be released in due course.
We acknowledge that this election is unusual due to the previous elections during the Covid19 outbreak, which have forced a change in timings, and that the next terms of office will aim to return us to the normal timetable (i.e. election deadline at the Annual meeting each year).
As always, the Annual Meeting brings together researchers from all fields of liquid crystal science, at all career stages, but in particular aims to be a platform for early career researchers, from academia and industry, to present their work.
We very much look forward to meeting you in Glasgow next year. For more information, please visit the following sites:
The G.W. Gray Medal
As always, the Annual Meeting brings together researchers from all fields of liquid crystal science, at all career stages, but in particular aims to be a platform for early career researchers, from academia and industry, to present their work.
We very much look forward to meeting you in Glasgow next year. For more information, please visit the meeting website www.gla.ac.uk/events/conferences/blcs2023/
Deadline for abstract submission: 13th February 2023
Registration opens: 3rd January 2023
After two years of waiting, our 2020 George Gray medal winner, Prof. Ewa Górecka (University of Warsaw), was finally presented with the award in person.
Prof. Ewa Górecka (University of Warsaw) receiving the 2020 BLCS Gray Medal Award from the current chair the of the BLCS, Prof. Nigel Mottram, together with past Chairs, Profs John Goodby and Corrie Imrie. Photo credits go to BLCS Treasurer, Prof. Giampaolo D’Alessandro.
Prof. Górecka’s work on the chemistry and physics of liquid crystals has been hugely influential over the last 30 years. Her work has led to crucial insights into the structure and organisation of almost all phases of liquid crystal, focussing particular on aspects of chirality, ferro/antiferroelectricity, polarity and investigating newer phases such as the twist-bend phase. Prof. Górecka has collaborated with many institutions around the world, including visiting professorships at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, KAIST research university in Korea, Penang University in Malaysia, the French Institute of Physics and Material Chemistry, Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. For many years, she has had substantial collaborations with the University of Maribor and the University of Aberdeen. She has received previous awards from the Japanese Society of Applied Physics, the Wiktor Kemula Prize, the Prof. Wojciech Świętosławski Prize, and the Prime Minister’s Award for outstanding scientific achievements.
The award was presented during the recent International Liquid Crystal Conference in Lisbon by the current BLCS Chair, Prof. Nigel Mottram, together with past Chairs, Profs John Goodby and Corrie Imrie, and the BLCS Treasurer, Prof. Giampaolo D’Alessandro (who also took the photographs).
Prof. Ewa Górecka (University of Warsaw) along side Profs. Nigel Mottram, John Goodby and Corrie Imrie.
