We celebrated 2nd year Delaware ChBE department talks with some bowling!

Such a creative and engaging outreach initiative! Kudos to @arthijayaraman, Jenn, Kara and Luke Landherr, and especially Bayles Group member Juliana Nam!

I'm always happy to send colorful therapy putty! I'm even happier to send it along with Figure 5 from the exceptional primer by Randy Ewoldt & Saengow doi.org/10.1146/annure…

Hello! We took a break from scrolling X to give our undivided attention to real life. 2024 has been a whirlwind–packed with people, papers, presentations, and proposals. The semester’s start is a perfect time to reflect with gratitude and share our favorite group developments.

People: Graduate students Nina Fratto (co-advised w/Thomas Epps) and Kaan Murat joined the group and began new projects on lignin-derivable inks and microfluidic interferometry. Congrats to both for recently passing their PhD qualifiers!

People: Undergraduate student Tiffany Jung completed a senior research project in the lab and graduated with her BChE! She’s off working at Advanced Food Products.

People: Undergraduate students Clara Middleton and Rita Wilson completed REUs in our group through Center for Hybrid, Active, & Responsive Materials. They learned new lab and professional skills from postdoc mentor Patrick McCauley. Watch out for their grad school apps this fall!

People: Our growing group had fun bonding over the summer while tie dying, savoring ice cream and lunches, and competing at UD CBE’s Field Day. Enthusiasm is infectious :)

Papers: Patrick McCauley and PI Bayles’s manuscript on 3D printing nozzle innovations was featured in the inaugural Rising Stars in Chemical Engineering issue of ACS Engineering Au. Read it here: doi.org/10.1021/acseng…

Papers: Patrick Danner (Empa) and Tazio Pleij (ETH Zurich) published their work with PI Bayles, @JanVermant, and Dorina Opris (Empa) on polysiloxane capillary suspension 3D printing inks for dielectric elastomer transducers. Read it here: doi.org/10.1002/adfm.2…

Papers: Tazio Pleij (ETH Zurich) published his work with PI Bayles and @JanVermant on combining advective assembly nozzles with support bath 3D printing to build actuating hydrogels with complex topologies. Read it here: doi.org/10.1002/admt.2…

Presentations: PI Bayles presented at the GRC on Colloidal, Macromolecular, and Polyelectrolyte Solutions in Ventura, CA. It was an exceptionally stimulating meeting with equally exceptional scientists.

Presentations: Graduate student Juliana Nam and postdoc Patrick McCauley presented at the Mid-Atlantic Soft Matter Workshop at Georgetown University! We’re looking forward to hosting the next iteration of MASM at UD in a few months.

Presentations: PI Bayles connected with industry through invited talks at the Formulation Science and Engineering for the Common Good Workshop in DC and at TA Instruments. Academia-industry dialogues are fantastic for maximizing impact and translation.

In short, 2024 has been a blast. We’re off to the lab to keep racking up excuses to have celebratory desserts in group meeting.