The speakers


Click on the speaker photo to reach her/his web site.

Tommaso Bellini

Università degli studi di Milano, Italy
IMG_2692

Tommaso G. Bellini, born in 1961, completed his PhD in Physics in 1989 at the University of Pavia, Italy, under the guidance of V. Degiorgio. After a postdoctoral stay with N.A. Clark at the University of Colorado, he was appointed Researcher in Condensed Matter at the University of Pavia (1992), associate Professor in General Physics at the Politecnico di Milano (1999), full Professor in Applied Physics at the University of Milano (2002), where he has joined the Faculty of Medicine. His experimental activity in the field of bio-soft matter includes: liquid crystals in confinement, electrokinetics of colloids, self-assembly of oligonucleotides, novel concepts for label-free biosensors.

Presentation title: Liquid-Crystallization of Ultrashort DNA and RNA Oligomers: a Phase Behavior Rich in Challenges for Soft-Matter Science
(Session i. Liquid crystals in and from living matter and in medicine)

Christophe Blanc

CNRS-University Montpellier II, France
photoCBc

Christophe Blanc graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and received PhD degree (2000) in solid state physics from Pierre et Marie Curie University. Since 2001 he has a permanent position in CNRS at Montpellier in Laboratoire des Colloides, Verres et Nanomatériaux where he works in the Soft Matter group. During the recent years, his interests have focused on the dynamics of liquid crystals defects, the dynamical properties of anchoring, but also on new materials based on liquid crystal composites.

Presentation title: Single wall carbon nanotubes: liquid crystal properties and nematic ordering in composites
(Session iii. Colloidal liquid crystals and liquid crystal colloids)

Yves Bouligand

Université Angers, EPHE, France
Bouligand

Yves Bouligand studied biology at the ENS, rue d’Ulm, and received his PhD from the University of Paris 6. After a postdoctoral year in Bristol, he joined the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Centre de Cytologie Expérimentale, a CNRS unit near Paris. His research was first pure zoology, mainly parasites (crustaceans) and symbionts (xanthellae) of corals. Microscopy was essential to analyse the inner geometry of fcarapaces or chromosomes. Though very different, these materials had in common to be made of long polymers (chitin or DNA) showing a cholesteric order. Liquid crystals with their defects and textures were then investigated as models of precise morphogenetic processes in biological systems.

Presentation title: Unsolved problems in liquid crystal defects and textures, with examples from both synthetic matter and biological systems
(Session i. Liquid crystals in and from living matter and in medicine)

Ingo Dierking

University of Manchester, UK
photo

The research interests of Ingo Dierking (Diploma in Physics 1992, Dr rer. nat 1995, Habilitation 2002, Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor since 2005) lie in the general field of Soft Matter Physics, especially chirality in liquid crystals, polymer modified liquid crystal composites, liquid crystal - micro- and nano-particle dispersions, growth and coarsening phenomena, and fractal structures in soft and biological matter.

Presentation title:
Polymer modified fluid ferroelectrics
(Session v. Liquid crystals in sensors, actuators and novel optic and electrooptic devices)

Katarina Edwards

Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Katarina3_ram4gul_003

Katarina Edwards is professor in physical chemistry at Uppsala University. Her previous research has mainly concerned structure, dynamics, and phase behaviour in lipid/surfactant systems. The scientific activities have frequently been directed towards issues and systems of pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnical relevance. Special emphasis has been put on development and characterization of liposomes, and related self assembled aggregates, intended for drug delivery. Present research activities include the development of liposomes for targeted radio-nuclide therapy, mechanistic studies of lipid-peptide interactions, and development and optimization of a novel type of polymer-stabilized nanodisks for pharmaceutical and analytical applications.

Presentation title:
Nanodisks and Nuclisomes - from model membranes to targeted drug delivery
(Session i. Liquid crystals in and from living matter and in medicine)

Frank Gießelmann

Universität Stuttgart, Germany
FG

Frank Giesselmann studied chemistry and received his PhD from the Technische Universität Clausthal-Zellerfeld. During his post-doctoral studies on phase transitions in liquid crystals, he worked with Peter Zugenmaier (Clausthal), W. Kuczynski (Poland), and Sven T. Lagerwall (Sweden). In 1998 he finished his habilitation and received the venia legendi in Physical Chemistry. Since 2002 he has been Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Universität Stuttgart, where he also joined the International Max Planck Research School on Advanced Materials. His foremost research interest is the liquid crystalline state of matter including the structure and dynamics, the phase transitions, and the electrical/optical properties of both thermotropic and lyotropic liquid-crystalline phases.

Presentation title:
Electroclinic effect amplification, polydispersity and the stability of smectics
(Session iv. Liquid crystals for new functional materials, organic electronics and photovoltaics)

Helen Gleeson

University of Manchester, UK
Helen4

Helen Gleeson gained her PhD in Physics from Manchester in 1986, joined their academic staff in 1989 and is now the Head of the School. She is an experimentalist whose research interests include optical properties of liquid crystals, laser interactions with LC droplets, structural studies of chiral systems, and most recently biaxial nematics. She is also interested in using LCs in non-device configurations, e.g. as sensors. Helen's past roles have included Chair of the British Liquid Crystal Society, Editor of Liquid Crystals Today and Chair of the ILCS Honours and Awards Committee. She is currently the Vice Chairman of the ILCS. Helen has published more than 110 papers and made over 250 conference presentations.

Presentation title:
Electro-optic effects in reduced symmetry liquid crystals
(Session v. Liquid crystals in sensors, actuators and novel optic and electrooptic devices)

Robert Hołyst

Polskiej akademii nauk, Poland
rh11

Robert Hołyst graduated from Warsaw University (physics) in 1986 and after PhD (chemistry) in 1989 and habilitation (1992) he became full professor in 1998. He has worked in the USA (University of Washington), France (Ecole Normale Superieure) and Germany (Max Planck Institute Mainz) and collaborated with industrial partners (Mitsui Chemicals Inc., Unilever, Samsung). His scientific interests range from statistical mechanics to soft matter, biophysics and biochemistry (both theory and experiment). He is a coauthor of 160 scientific papers, two books and five patents. He is currently a professor and scientific director at the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS and a professor at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw.

Presentation title:
Collective rotations on surfaces, stable boolaamphiphile monolayers overcoming collapse, incorporation of large objects into LC lyotropic phases, motion of ions in LCs
(Session ii. Drops, bubbles, tubes, foams and films)

Françoise Livolant

Université Paris Sud, France
Livolant

Françoise Livolant completed her "Doctorat de 3ème cycle" in 1977 and her "Doctorat d'Etat" in 1981 in biology and biophysics at the University Paris-VI, France, under the guidance of Yves Bouligand. She got a permanent position at the CNRS in 1979 and worked at the Centre de Biologie Cellulaire, Ivry-sur-Seine (France) until 1994 when she moved to the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay. She started her own group to study the structure and function of condensed states of DNA and chromatin. A special attention is paid to polyelectrolyte and structural aspects of model systems (DNA, nucleosomes etc..) that can be used to help understand the functional activity of the genetic material /in vivo/ (ejection of DNA from the bacteriophage, structure of chromatin in the cell nucleus, etc.).

Presentation title:
How to use the bacteriophage system to analyze the structure and phase transitions of DNA in and out of the capsid
(Session i. Liquid crystals in and from living matter and in medicine)

Annette Meister

Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
1228292786_1233_00_800

Annette Meister received her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1994 at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. After a postdoctoral stay at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (1999-2000), the Max Planck Institute of Colloid and Interface Science in Potsdam (2001) and the CEA Saclay in France (2002) she joined the group of A. Blume at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (2003, Habilitation 2008). Her current experimental activity in the field of soft matter includes: self-assembly of bolaamphiphiles, interfacial behaviour of lipids and surfactants at the air-water interface and interaction of peptides and proteins with lipid monolayers studied with Infrared Reflection Absorption Spectroscopy.

Presentation title:
The Formation of Square Lamellae by Self-Assembled Symmetric Single-Chain Bolaamphiphiles
(Session ii. Drops, bubbles, tubes, foams and films)

Michel Mitov

Centre d'Elaboration de Matériaux et d'Etudes Structurales (CNRS), France
photo M Mitov

Michel Mitov received his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from the Univ. of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France). After a postdoctoral period at Chalmers Univ. of Technology in Göteborg (Sweden), he got a permanent position at CNRS-CEMES in Toulouse (France) where he is the leader of the LC Physics team. His interests have focused on optical and structural properties of cholesteric LCs (CLCs) and Polymer-Stabilized CLCs. He is working on unusual features of the Bragg light reflection (How to broaden the wavelength bandwidth ? How to go beyond the reflectance limit ?) and the self assembly of nanoparticles and nanotubes in CLCs. He is the author of two monographs on LCs (2000) and soft matter (2009, forthcoming).

Presentation title:
Going beyond the reflectance limit of cholesteric liquid crystals: experimental and theoretical investigations
(Session iv. Liquid crystals for new functional materials, organic electronics and photovoltaics)

Igor Muševič

Institut “Jožef Stefan”, Slovenia
musevicDSC_0050_thumb

Igor Muševič received his BsC and PhD degrees in physics at the University of Ljubljana. He was a visiting scientist at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and Max Planck Institute in Grenoble. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Ljubljana and the Head of Condensed Matter Physics Department at J. Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. His research interests include physics of ferroelectric liquid crystals, behaviour of liquid crystals in high magnetic fields, optical spectroscopy, forces generated by complex fluids, self-assembly in liquid crystal colloids and single atom manipulation at low temperatures. He is the recipient of several national and international scientific awards

Presentation title:
Nematic Colloidal Crystals, Superstructures and Optical Microresonators
(Session iii. Colloidal liquid crystals and liquid crystal colloids)

Mary O'Neill

University of Hull, UK
mo

Mary O'Neill received her PhD in Physics from the University of Strathclyde. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Glasgow and a short spell in industry, she joined the University of Hull. She is currently Professor of Physics and is joint leader of an interdisciplinary team investigating photonic and optoelectronic applications for semiconducting liquid crystals. Other research interests include the photoalignment of liquid crystals and hybrid inorganic-organic optoelectronic devices.

Presentation title:
Semiconducting nematic liquid crystals: properties and devices
(Session iv. Liquid crystals for new functional materials, organic electronics and photovoltaics)

Ulf Olsson

Lunds universitet, Sweden
dokument41

Ulf Olsson is a professor in Physical Chemistry at Lund University. He obtained his PhD in Lund 1988. After a year as a post-doctoral fellow at Centre Paul Pascal, Pessac (Bordeaux), he returned to Lund at the end of 1989, and has remained there, at the division of Physical Chemistry, ever since. His research interest has for a long time been focused on surfactant self-assembly and microemulsions involving self-assembly structure, phase equilibria and structural transformation kinetics. Experimental methods involve mainly various NMR and scattering methods. Since recently, his research interests also includes the self-assembly of peptides and other biomolecules.
Presentation title:
Shear Induced Formation of Multi-Lamellar Vesicles (“Onions”)
(Session ii. Drops, bubbles, tubes, foams and films)

Owe Orwar

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
bild_owe


Presentation title:
Molecule-By-Molecule Nanoassembly in Dynamic Liquid Films
(Session ii. Drops, bubbles, tubes, foams and films)

David Quéré

École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, France
Pasted Graphic 1


Presentation title:
Pearl drops
(Session ii. Drops, bubbles, tubes, foams and films)

Per Rudquist

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Per, Pontus, Anna_2

Per Rudquist gained his PhD in Physics in 1997 at Chalmers University of Technology. In 1999-2000 he spent several periods at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Rudquist is since 2004 Associate Professor at the department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience at Chalmers. His research includes optics, electrooptics, and physics in general of chiral thermotropic liquid crystals with special focus on ferroelectric and antiferroelectric systems. Recently he has also started activities in using liquid crystal materials for sensing applications, e.g. chiral detection and measurements of enantiomeric excess in chiral pharmaceuticals. Rudquist is on the Board of Directors of the International Liquid Crystal Society. He has published about 70 scientific papers and book chapters, e.g. the chapter on Smectic LCD Modes in the forthcoming Handbook of Visual Displays.

Presentation title:
On the balance between ferroelectric and antiferroelectric order; mono-, bi-, and tristable liquid crystals
(Session v. Liquid crystals in sensors, actuators and novel optic and electrooptic devices)

Giusy Scalia

ENEA C.R. Portici, Italy
Giusy

Giusy Scalia received her PhD in Physics at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden in 2002. Directly afterwards she took on a researcher position at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA). In 2004 she was guest researcher at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany, funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). In 2006-2007 she worked as a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics, Stuttgart, Germany, holding a Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship. Her research interests range from the optical properties of liquid crystals, including photoconductivity, to the optical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and graphene, and their composites with liquid crystals.

Presentation title:
Self-organized nanocomposites: carbon nanotubes ordered by liquid crystals
(Session iii. Colloidal liquid crystals and liquid crystal colloids)

Paul van der Schoot

Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands
vdSchoot

PvdS obtained his doctorate at the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, in 1992, worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK, from 1992 to 1995, the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Teltow-Seehof, Germany, from 1995 to 1998, and the Van’t Hoff Laboratory in Utrecht, Netherlands, from 1998 to 1999. From 1999 he has been employed as a lecturer at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He specializes in soft matter theory, in particular of colloids, liquid crystals and supramolecular polymers.

Presentation title:
Capillary rise of the interface between coexisting isotropic and nematic phases
(Session iii. Colloidal liquid crystals and liquid crystal colloids)

Ralf Stannarius

Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany
Stannarius

• studied Physics at Leipzig University, PhD in 1985 (NMR-Spectroscopy of Liquid Crystals),
• 1985-2003 assistant professor in Leipzig,
• since 2003 full professor for experimental physics (Dept. of Nonlinear Phenomena) at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg,
• fields of interest: nonlinear phenomena, self organization and pattern formation in physical, chemical and biological systems, hydrodynamics of complex liquids, liquid crystals, granular matter and ferrofluids, LC elastomers and gels, LC colloids.
• Books: 'Molecules in interaction with surfaces' (Lecture Notes in Physics), 2004, ed., 'Kompaktkurs Physik' 2004 with H. Pfeifer and H. Schmiedel.

Presentation title:
Liquids in one and two dimensions
(Session ii. Drops, bubbles, tubes, foams and films)

Carsten Tschierske

Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
tsc

Carsten Tschierske received his PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1985 at the University of Halle. After habilitation and several visitor professorships he was appointed in 1994 as Professor of Organic Chemistry/Supramolecular Chemistry at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany. His primary research interest is focussed on the design of new materials forming complex self organised soft-matter structures.

Presentation title:
Complexity in Liquid Crystal Self Assembly
(Session iv. Liquid crystals for new functional materials, organic electronics and photovoltaics)

Gert Jan Vroege

Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
gertjan

Gert Jan Vroege obtained his doctorate on the theory of lyotropic liquid crystal polymers in the group of Theo Odijk at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 1989. He worked on thermotropic polymer liquid crystals as a researcher at the Institute for Polymer Materials TNO, and has been employed as a (senior) lecturer/researcher since 1992 at the Van’t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Since 2004, he has also been a fellow of University College Utrecht. His current field of interest comprises experiments and theory of colloids, in particular mineral liquid crystals.

Presentation title:
Goethite: extraordinary mineral liquid crystals
(Session iii. Colloidal liquid crystals and liquid crystal colloids)

Mark Warner

Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK
Mark

Mark Warner is a theoretical physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University. His main interests are in liquid crystal elastomers. With Professor EM Terentjev, he has written a research monograph “Liquid Crystal Elastomers” (OUP, paperback edition, 2007). He has predicted or modelled phenomena such as in nematics huge thermal and optical elongations (including polarisation dependence), low cost shape change associated with director rotation (“soft elasticity”); chiral-mechanical response in cholesteric elastomers; and complex mechanics in smectics.

Presentation title:
Switching an (improper) ferro-electric SmC* elastomer
(Session v. Liquid crystals in sensors, actuators and novel optic and electrooptic devices)

Claudio Zannoni

Università dì Bologna, Italy
claudio_05s

Claudio Zannoni received his PhD in Chemical Physics at Southampton University, UK, in 1975. He is Full Professor of Physical Chemistry of Materials (1987-) and Director of the Department of Physical Chemistry at Bologna University, IT. He also directs the International School of Liquid Crystals, Erice, IT, since 1998. His research interests include Modeling and Computer Simulations and the use of Spectroscopic Techniques to investigate bulk and nanoconfined Liquid Crystals, Polymers, Proteins and other Soft Materials. He is an author of over 200 papers and has given more than 200 invited lectures on these topics.

Presentation title:
The perspectives of modelling and simulations for device and non-device applications of liquid crystals
(Session iv. Liquid crystals for new functional materials, organic electronics and photovoltaics
The planned contribution from Prof. John Goodby (University of York) unfortunately had to be cancelled due to conflicting teaching duties.