About the topic
Liquid crystals (LCs) have captivated many with their unique optical, physical chemistry, and anisotropic behaviors. Consequently, it has gathered tremendous efforts from chemists, physicists, and biologists in unraveling their fundamental sciences and potential applications across various fields, ranging from optical applications to biosensors. Furthermore, there has been increasing motivation to synergize fascinating properties of LCs with emerging research interests like microfluidics techniques, molecular motors design, and soft templates for micro-scale assemblies. Such synergies create exciting cross-disciplinary research approaches that can potentially spearhead the development of new frontiers in LCs-based technologies. Within this broad context of cross-disciplinary approaches to LCs research, in this seminar, I aim to share the proof-of-concept platforms developed during my PhD. These platforms were built upon knowledge across various fields, ranging from biochemistry of proteases to surface chemistry and LCs-mediated assembly of microparticles. At the end, I hope that this seminar can motivate discussions to explore the potential of LCs to the fullest.
About the speaker
Irvine Ong is a Postdoctoral Scientist at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in the Soft Materials Laboratory (SMaL) of Professor Esther Amstad at the Institute of Materials. His current work focuses on controlling the transport phenomena of chemical species within double emulsion systems. He obtained his Bachelors (2011) and PhD (2016) in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore (NUS), respectively. During his PhD in Professor Yang Kun-Lin’s group, he researched on surface chemistry and biosensing capabilities of liquid crystals (LCs). During which, he also developed insights on the self-assembly of microparticles driven by topological defects within the LCs phase. After his PhD, he started as the Research Scientist in Matralix, an NUS startup company. During the two years, he developed microfluidics-based processes at industrially-relevant production scales. Given his broad experiences in both academia and industry, he is keen to adopt cross-disciplinary approaches to investigate current research topics.