BML welcomes Four New Board Members!
Jan Vermant from the Department of Materials (D-MATL) and Helma Wennemers from the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (D-CHAB) join the Board of BML together with Madhav Jagannathan and Gabriel Neurohr, both from the Depatment of Biology (D-BIOL), who became BML associates the last November.
The Soft Materials group of Jan Vermant is interested in understanding and exploiting the link between the unique microstructures and the properties of soft materials, with an emphasis on structural and rheological properties. Materials classes belonging to soft matter range from polymers, colloids over surfactive active components and mixtures thereof. The group has a strong fundamental focus, but applications domains impacting society in a longer run, are broad with human health and materials or processes which improve sustainability being most of the time at the core of their work.
The overarching theme of the research of the Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology group of Helma Wennemers is the development of small molecules with functions that are fulfilled in nature by large macromolecules. They utilize the power of organic synthesis to access functionalities that nature might have not had in the repertoire of building blocks. The focus is both on practical applications and an understanding of the properties on the molecular level. This scope includes the development of bioinspired asymmetric catalysts and functionalizable collagen, molecular scaffolds for applications in supramolecular and biological chemistry (e.g., cell-penetrating peptides, and tumor targeting), and the controlled formation of metal nanoparticles.
The research of the group of Madhav Jagannathan and Gabriel Neurohr was highlighted in an article back in November: To read it follow this link.