News

On March 13th, Yuxin You successfully defended her PhD thesis, titled “Programmed Dynamic Topographical Deformations in Liquid Crystal Polymers. Yuxin focused on surface topographies, referring to the micro-scale textures of the outermost layer of a coating. They are crucial in determining how the surface looks and feels, as well as influencing the wettability, tribology, and optical […]

The HIM group congratulates its member, Dr. Mert Orhan Astam, on receiving the NWO Faculty of Impact grant for his start-up, HaptonTech. We are proud to work together with him to valorize the innovative and exciting technologies that are being developed at the HIM group! Correspondence Mert Astam 

The winners of this year’s annual funny idea competition were rewarded highly with a shopping spree at one of the group’s favorite shops: Albert Heijn! With a 100 euros of credit, courtesy of the HIM group, and 5 minutes to collect that value of items, the winners were running around the shop collecting their most

On March 13th, Dongyu Zhang successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “Light- and Electricity-Induced Liquid Secretion from Liquid Crystal Polymer Coatings.” The thesis draws inspiration from nature, where liquid secretion plays a vital role in biological systems—forming protective barriers, regulating temperature, enabling substance transport, and facilitating chemical reactions. Mimicking this adaptive behavior, Dongyu’s research explores

We’re excited to share that Duygu represented our lab at the 2024 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, held December 1–6 in Boston, Massachusetts. This event brought together more than 6,000 researchers to exchange cutting-edge developments and ideas across a broad range of topics of material science. On December 4, Duygu gave an oral presentation titled “An Autonomous Snapper with

We are excited to announce that the HIM research group will be participating in the upcoming International Liquid Crystal Elastomer Conference 2025 with a contributed talk and poster presentations! ILCEC 2025 is bringing together the researchers from diverse backgrounds in materials science to share the recent advancements in reconfigurable network chemistries, materials physics, localization of

Jacques becomes the prize-winning face of HIM at the SPIE conference! All of the HIM family congratulates our PhD student Jacques for his performance at the SPIE Photonics Europe conference in Strasbourg. His research regarding liquid crystal optics and photonics devices and turned heads at the conference, and he was awarded the second prize in

The HIM group congratulates Mert, Pengrong and Duygu for their new publications and top-of-the-line covers! The HIM group is very proud to announce that its PhD candidates, Mert Astam, Pengrong Lyu and Duygu Polat, have recently published papers in the Matter, Nature Communications, Chemistry Europe and Extreme Mechanics Letters journals; this is some outstanding productivity!

Professor Broer becomes a double doctor! The legacy of the HIM group is built upon the grand achievements of our founders and forebearers! As Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This definitely applies for the HIM group, hence we take every opportunity to

The work of the researchers at the HIM group fascinates people far and wide, yet only a few get the pleasure of seeing and even feeling our technologies up close! Thus, when the HIM group was invited to present its demonstrators at the MaterialenNL conference, HIM PhD candidate Mert Astam went prepared to amaze. The