From June 25th to June 27th 2018 the School of Mathematics and Physics hosted a CECAM workshop “Nano-structured soft matter: a synergy of approaches to amphiphilic and block copolymer systems” bringing together experts in two research fields of soft matter physics: block co-polymers and lipid amphiphilic systems.

The aim of the workshop was to facilitate the interaction between the two research communities so as to identify areas where cross-fertilisation of ideas was possible.

To this end the workshop attendees comprised both experimentalists and computational modellers in each research field enabling thus a better grasp at the experimental and theoretical similarities and differences between them.

A discussion type workshop attracted around 40 leading experts from 11 countries: UK, USA, Japan, Germany, Canada, China, France, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Spain, and Ireland. The workshop was supported by a grant from CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire), the oldest European Institute for the promotion of fundamental research on advanced computational methods and their application to problems in frontier areas of science and technology, with its headquarters in Lausanne. The workshop was also sponsored by a Japanese company JSOL, one of leaders in the field computer software for soft materials.

The meeting was organised jointly by a team from the University of Lincoln (Prof Andrei Zvelindovsky, Drs Martin Greenall, Fabien Paillusson and Bart Vorselaars) and Dr Xiaohu Guo from Daresbury National Laboratory, UK.

Organisers with Daan Frenkel, L-R: Andrei Zvelindovsky, Daan Frenkel, Bart Vorselaars, Xiaohu Guo, Martin Greenall and Fabien Paillusson.

Participants engaged in lively discussions during the display of research posters (see below)

Poster session

and during panel discussions held at the end of each session for everybody to engage with.

The issues and possible areas identified for future development for amphiphilic and bloc-copolymer systems were further elaborated upon and summarised in a final panel discussion closing the event whilst illustrating the international character of this successful meeting (see below).

Final panel discussion. From left to right: Carlos Marques from Strasbourg (France), John Seddon from London (UK), Daan Frenkel from Cambridge (UK) and An-Chang Shi from Hamilton (Canada).