The PhD students of the two ITNs DISTRUC and COLLDENSE participated at the Edinburgh International Science Festival from April 6-8, 2018. In collaboration between the two networks, the students organized the workshop “Nature Matters!” tailored at children aged 8-12 in self-management. During 6 workshops, the young scientists explained the interesting properties of materials based on Soft Matter. Marie Föllmer, PhD student at CANOE, showed to the children how to make their own fibres from alginate by coagulation spinning. The stand was very successful and the feedback received from the visitors was very positive.

The project DiStruc – Directed Structure at the meso-scale – is a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN). CANOE is working on topics related to colloidal liquid crystals, which represents the scientific focus of the project. CANOE is mainly working on the spinning of lignin and other polymers structured through liquid crystalline colloidal particles, such as carbon nanotubes, cellulose nanowhiskers, cellulose nanofibrils and graphene. For scientific advice on these topics, we are kindly supported by Philippe Poulin from CRPP.