From March 24, 2013 to April 24th, Tsinghua Xuetang Lectures invited Dr. Charl Faul from School of Chemistry, University of Bristol to give a series of lectures focused on "Introduction to liquid crystal materials". The lectures were held at Lecture Room 102 of Qing Hua Xue Tang.
Dr. Charl Faul organized six lectures and one experimental section during one month. The lectures first introduced the history of liquid crystal material to inspire student' interests in this special material, and then focused on analysis, classification, properties, design, synthesis, characterization and application of the liquid crystal material. In order to let the students have a more intuitive understanding of the liquid crystal material, Dr Charl Faul arranged one experimental section in the newly established polymer laboratory, supervising students synthesizing liquid crystal molecule and analyzing their products by Polarizing microscope. Students said, through the lectures, they understood the fourth phase of liquid crystal materials, which is different from gas and liquid phase, and further enhanced their understanding to the material through hands-on experiment. At the same time, after a month of classes and communication with Dr. Charl Faul, students have greatly improved professional English both on listening and speaking.
Dr CharlFaul received his PhD in 2000 from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. After working for a year as postdoctoral researcher with Markus Antonietti at the Max-Planck-Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam, Germany), he led an independent research group exploring the principles of ionic self-assembly (ISA) until 2004 at the same institute. He then moved to the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol. The University of Bristol in UK is Britain's traditional elite, which is also known as the "engineering kingdom" reputation. In 2008 British national research assessment, Bristol Science was in the top three of UK, after only the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. Charl has held an invited international lectureship of Tsinghua University in 2011 (with Prof. Xi Zhang, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China).
Tsinghua Xuetang Lectures will continue to invite more experts, and the opened lectures will be noticed in the "Lectures & Announcements" on the first page of the website of the Department of Chmistry, Tsinghua University. Attentions and participations are welcome. (reported by ZhongqiangYang)
The photo of Dr. Charl Faul giving Tsinghua Xuetang Lectures
The photo of Dr. Charl Faul supervising Tsinghua Xuetang students doing liquid crystal experiments
The photo of Dr. Charl Faul with Tsinghua Xuetang students
