Lei and Guillaume presented at the CME/NASA Symposium of ACS Fall 2026 to celebrate their 2026 ACS Global Outstanding Graduate Student and Mentor Awards in Polymer Science and Engineering.

Many congratulations to Qianqian who won the Faculty of Science and Engineering Photography Competition 2026 with the image 'Forging a Galaxy with Force'!

Today we say goodbye to James after 4.5 years in the group as a Phd student and, more recently, a postdoc. We thank him for his hard work and contributions to the group, and we wish him the very best in his new role in group of Michael Lerch.

Lei and Guillaume have respectively been awarded the 2026 ACS Global Outstanding Graduate Student and Mentor Awards in Polymer Science and Engineering. The ACS Global Outstanding Student and Mentor Awards in Polymer Science and Engineering recognizes the latest knowledge of polymer research of students and their mentors, one from United States and one from anywhere in the world. The award is sponsored by Chemical Marketing & Economics, Inc. (CME) and co-organized by CME and the Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) Division of the American Chemical Society.

It's the end of an era with the last day of Lei in the group. We thank Lei for his incredible contribution to the group over the past 6 years, first as a PhD student then as a postdoc. Lei is heading back to China where he will take a position of Professor in the College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Materials Science at Soochow University. We wish him all the best for the future!

It was an eventful week in the group as we celebrate our newly minted PhD: Dr Ieong and Dr Ormson. Many congratulations to Alice and James, who have defended their theses with brio in front of Dr Deborah Crawford and Dr Michael James, and Dr Nick Evans and Prof. Simon Webb respectively! We wish them all the best for the future. 

Today was the last day of Tomás in the group. Tomás is now heading back to the University of Murcia in Spain. We thank Tomás for his hard work over the past couple of year and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Guillaume has delivered his award lecture in a special symposium at the ACS Fall meeting 2025 in Washington DC. The symposium was organised to celebrate the recipients of the 2025 ACS Macro Letters/Macromolecules/Biomacromolecules Young Investigated Award: Julia Kalow and Guillaume. Julia and Guillaume had the opportunity to invite friends and collaborators to speak at the symposium, which made for a memorable occasion.