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Conference Report - Abigail Bond, ILCC

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I recently had the opportunity to attend the 29th International Liquid Crystal Conference, with the help of funding from the Institute of Physics, British Liquid Crystal Society and the Soft Matter Physics group at Leeds, to present both a poster and a talk. These were entitled “Polymer Stabilization of Nematic Liquid Crystals Confined in Stripes”, and “Investigation of Nematic Liquid Crystal Behaviours when Confined in Stripe Geometries”, respectively, where stripes were chemically patterned onto a surface and filled with liquid crystal (LC) or LC mixtures, with a free top surface open to air. The work is towards creating more sensitive LC-based sensing devices. The experiences provided invaluable knowledge on networking and discussing my own work and the work of others, as well as clearly presenting the work. Attending a wide range of talks both in my more specific area and in the wider liquid crystal area was inspiring and helped me to understand the scope of this research community. The tutorial by I. Dierking entitled “Characterization of liquid crystals via textures: from polarizing microscopy to machine learning” for example expanded my knowledge on polarised optical microscopy, a commonly used technique in the liquid crystal field. I would like to thank the organizers of ILCC 2024 for a successful, welcoming, and enriching conference, as well as allowing me to present both a poster and a talk. Thank you to the delegates of the conference for the inspiring talks and discussions. Thank you also to all who funded me including UKRI: EPSRC, BLCs student bursary, IOP travel fund, and Soft Matter Physics at Leeds conference funding. Thank you also to my co-authors and supervisors: T. Moorhouse, S.A. Peyman, S.D. Evans, and H.F. Gleeson

 

Abigail Bond: University of Leeds
Email: py18a2b@leeds.ac.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-bond-5520a8222