{"id":441,"date":"2014-06-05T16:33:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T15:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blcs.eng.cam.ac.uk\/?p=441"},"modified":"2014-06-12T16:26:27","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T15:26:27","slug":"conference-report-blcs-annual-meeting-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"Conference Report: BLCS Annual Meeting 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

14-16 April 2014, Collingwood College, Durham University<\/strong><\/p>\n

article by Simon Wood<\/p>\n

\"durham\"<\/a>The Annual Meeting of the British Liquid Crystal Society was held on 14-16th April\u00a02014 in Collingwood College at Durham University.\u00a0The event provided an opportunity to bring together researchers in all areas of Liquid\u00a0Crystal research \u2013 from synthesis to simulations. Academics were present from a variety of\u00a0departments (Chemistry, Material Science, Physics, Engineering and\u00a0Mathematics) highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the field from both national and\u00a0international institutions. As well as providing a venue for the dissemination of the latest\u00a0research there were plenty of opportunities to foster new collaborations and nurture old\u00a0relationships \u2013 whether that was at poster sessions, over a pint in the bar on Tuesday\u00a0evening or over closely contested rounds of pool or table tennis in Collingwood College.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>There were 28 talks and 34 posters presented over the three days \u2013 including the\u00a0outstanding Sturgeon Lecture given by Oleg Lavrentovich (Kent State) on lyotropic\u00a0chromonic liquid crystals. Other invited talks \u2013 which were all also very engaging – were\u00a0given by Randall Kamien (University of Pennsylvania), Dave Walba (University of\u00a0Colorado), Andrew Masters (University of Manchester) and Igor Musevic (University of\u00a0Llubljana).\u00a0The AGM (chaired by Ingo Dierking, University of Manchester) was held on Monday 14th\u00a0and saw the election of Andrew Masters (Univeristy of Manchester) to the position of Vice-chairman and Chair-elect, Tim Wilkinson (University of\u00a0Cambridge) and Mike Hird (University of Hull) to the position of Ordinary Members of the Committee, John Goodby (University of York) to the position of an Industry Member of the Committee based on his involvement with Kingston Chemicals, and Simon Wood (University of Oxford) as a Student Member.<\/p>\n

The conference dinner was held in Collingwood College dining hall where portraits of\u00a0notable members stared down posters from musicals past and present. The meal was\u00a0excellent \u2013 as was Tim Wilkinson’s (University of Cambridge) gracious acceptance of the\u00a0Hilsum Medal. The Gray medal was awarded to Mark Warner (University of Cambridge)\u00a0who unfortunately couldn’t attend – though an acceptance was read out on his behalf.\u00a0Finally, the Young Scientist award was presented to Gareth Alexander (University of\u00a0Warwick).<\/p>\n

The final day was begun with a series of four talks on synthetic chemistry by students from\u00a0the University of Hull, a refreshing wake-up for those who had spent far too long in the bar\u00a0discussing their research on the previous night. John Goodby (University of York) followed\u00a0this up with a talk on ‘What makes a liquid crystal’ which also served as an excellent tribute\u00a0to George Gray who passed away in May last year. An exciting closing talk was given by\u00a0John Lydon (University of Leeds) on cellulose esters and their mesogenic properties which\u00a0closed proceedings with a (literal) bang.<\/p>\n

\"BLCS_2014_poster\"<\/a>The poster prize was won by Calum Williams (University of Cambridge, ‘Tunable multifunctional\u00a0nanostructured holograms using liquid crystals’), and the best oral prize went to\u00a0Rachel Hyman (University of Cambridge, ‘Polarisation independent phase-modulation of\u00a0light using polymer-stabilised blue phase liquid crystals’) and with that, the 28th Annual\u00a0British Liquid Crystal Society Conference came to an end – and I’m sure that all who\u00a0attended will agree that it was a great success \u2013 both in terms of the quality of research on\u00a0show, and for the excellent environment it provided for fostering interactions between\u00a0researchers from different universities and in different departments. Huge thanks must go\u00a0to Mark Wilson and the others at Durham who made the event possible.<\/p>\n

About the author: Simon Wood is a PhD student in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. Email:\u00a0simon.wood…at…eng.ox.ac.uk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14-16 April 2014, Collingwood College, Durham University article by Simon Wood The Annual Meeting of the British Liquid Crystal Society was held on 14-16th April\u00a02014 in Collingwood College at Durham University.\u00a0The event provided an opportunity to bring together researchers in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}