2025
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded the 2024 VICI grant to Martin for his proposal Shortening diffusion Pathways for Energy Dense and Ultrahigh Power Lithium Ion Batteries (SPEED-UP-LIBs).

Congratulations to Jesse! His paper entitled Analysis of Bijel Formation Dynamics During Solvent Transfer-Induced Phase Separation Using Phase-Field Simulations has just been published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
2024
Just in time for New Year's Eve, Matthijs's hard work has paid off beautifully. His paper entitled "Stabilizing Bicontinuous Particle-Stabilized Emulsions formed via Solvent Transfer-Induced Phase Separation" got accepted in Soft Matter today.
Jesse delivered an outstanding presentation titled 'Morphological Control over Bicontinuous Materials through Phase-Field Simulation' at the 2024 CHAINS Conference.
Congratulations to Mariska de Ruiter on successfully completing your PhD thesis! Your groundbreaking research is paving the way for faster-charging batteries and more efficient water-cleaning filters. Discover more about this remarkable achievement here.
Two oral, and two poster presentations from our group at the 38th ECIS conference in Copenhagen. Henrik presents "Bijel-templated hydrogel films for stimuli-responsive separation membranes", Jesse presents "Quantitative analysis of bicontinuous morphologies containing macrovoids", Wei presents "Synthesizing bicontinuous, particle-stabilized emulsions with battery nanoparticles", and Martin presents "Increasing surface area between two fluids with particle-stabilized, bicontinuous emulsions".
An exciting new publication by Alessio and co.!!! Bijels are versatile nanomaterials with tunable properties, ideal for applications in catalysis, energy storage, and membrane separations. This study presents surfactant-free bijels with sub-micrometer domains, stabilized exclusively by nanoparticles.
In their recent article, Henrik Siegel and Mariska de Ruiter reveal how nanoparticle assembly at the oil/water interface is shaped by the co-assembly of surfactants. Congratulations on their remarkable achievements!
Congratulations to a marvelous team of passionate scientists for their just published article!!! In her recent article, Mariska intertwines emulsions into particle-stabilized, bicontinuous networks (called bijels). This work introduces dual pore connections for bijels to two bulk phases, a unique architecture with potentials to overcome diffusion limitations for batteries and separation membranes.
Congratulations to Alessio Sprockel on successfully defending your PhD thesis today! Your impressive thesis has significantly advanced our understanding of the self-assembly of nanoparticles into hierarchical structures, opening exciting possibilities for innovative biphasic catalytic reactors.
Two oral presentations from our group at the Particles at Liquid Interfaces Symposium in Leeds. Geert presents "Analyzing phase separation kinetics from arrested structures", and Matthijs presents "Enhanced Lifetimes of Fluid-bicontinuous Emulsion Gels".
2023
The paper "Roll-to-Roll Fabrication of Bijels via Solvent Transfer Induced Phase Separation (R2R-STrIPS)" by Henrik, Mariska, Georgios, and Cos has been accepted in Advanced Materials Technologies. Congratulations!!!
The proposal "In-situ study of the formation of bijel fibers" by Matthijs and Andrei was selected for beam time allocation at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. Congratulations!!!
Wei-Che Lin joins our group as a new PhD candidate. Welcome! Wei will investigate bijels for electrochemical energy storage.
Suzan joins our group for her MSc thesis on making bijels electrically conductive. Her research continues the work of Stefan Bouts and is supervised by Matthijs.
Martin gives an invited presentation at Wetsus, the European centre of excellence for sustainable water technology about using bijels as separation membranes.
Shankar, now a postdoc at Auburn University, wins the best poster presentation award about his PhD work in our group on centrifugal assembly of helical bijel fibers at the Microflow and Interfacial Phenomena Conference at Northwestern University, USA.
Henrik shows his poster "Scalable fabrication of membranes via nanoparticle stabilized liquid-liquid phase separation" at the International Colloids conference in Palma de Mallorca. Also, Martin gives an oral presentation on the same conference.
Anouk and Ffion join the research group as MSc researchers. Anouk is supervised by Alessio, Geert, and Dominique and works on the functionalization of nanoparticles with aluminate ions. Ffion is supervised by Henrik and investigates the functionalization of silica nanoparticles with silane coupling agents. Welcome to both of you!
Martin gives a plenary presentation entitled Particle Stabilized Bicontinuous Emulsions: Basic Science for Sustainable Materials at the 18th Zsigmondy Colloquium 2023 in Berlin.
Azeem defends his PhD thesis "Particle-Stabilized Bicontinuous Emulsions with Nanostructured Domains". Congratulations on this great achievement, dr. Mohd Azeem Khan!
Alessio's and Azeem's paper entitled Fabrication of Bijels with Sub-Micron Domains via a Single-Channel Flow Device has been accepted for publication in Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects. Congratulations!
2022
Geert Schulpen joins our research group for their PhD studies. Geert wrote their own PhD project proposal within the framework of the Science for Sustainability program at Utrecht University. They won the competition to realize their project of passive cooling materials via high solar relfectivity. Congratulations and a very warm welcome!
Ariane and Luuk join our research group for their MSc research. Ariane works together with Jesse to investigate bijel film formation on different substrates. Luuk works together with Alessio for the formation of droplet polymers via microfluidics. Welcome!
Azeem wins the 1st poster price at the 51st General Assembly of the German Colloid Society for his poster entitled Submicronic Bicontinuous Emulsion Gels. Alessio gives an oral presentation entitled "Continuous-Flow Liquid–Liquid extraction in Nanostructured, Fluid-Bicontinuous Gels". Martin presents a keynote entitled "Separating Chemicals in Nanostructured, Fluid-Bicontinuous Gels". Also posters from Mariska (Bijel-templated membranes for molecular separations) and Henrik (Synthesis of semipermeable hollow fiber membranes via nanoparticle self-assembly during liquid-liquid phase separation) are on display.
Our group makes several contributions to the 2022 Chains conference: Henrik gives an oral presentation entitled "Membrane synthesis via nanoparticle stabilized liquid-liquid phase separation". Cos, Steffen, Benedikt and Koen show posters about their MSc projects.
Henrik's paper entitled "Synthesis and polyelectrolyte functionalization of hollow fiber membranes formed by solvent transfer induced phase separation" has been accepted for publication in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Congratulations!!
Martin and Matthijs participate in the ECIS conference in Chania, Crete. Matthijs presents his poster entitled "Multifunctional TiO2 Coatings as Reinforcement Agents and Catalytic Phases in Bijels". Martin gives a keynote presentation entitled "Separating Chemicals in Nanostructured, Fluid-Bicontinuous Gels".
Georgios wins the first price in the poster competition of the 2022 Annual General Meeting of the International Fine Particle Research Institute in Brussels. Congratulations!!
Shankars paper "Centrifugal assembly of helical bijel fibers for pH responsive composite hydrogels" has been highlighted in the special issue Rising Stars on the webpage of Advanced Materials.
The mini-symposium "From Colloids to Viruses: Soft Matter Comes Alive" takes place May 23-25, 2022, in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and covers topics from colloids to self-assembly, emulsions, and biophysics. The symposium is held in honor of Prof. Willem Kegel and in belated celebration of his 60th birthday. The organizers are Martin Haase (Utrecht University), Daniela Kraft (Leiden University), and Roel Dullens (Radboud University).
Martin gives an invited colloquium entitled Nanostructured Fluid-Bicontinuous Gels for Energy Efficient Molecular Separations at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart.
Press releases about Azeems's and Alessio's paper in the news of Utrecht University, phys.org, nanowerk, nano-magazine, nanotechnologyworld, statnano, dagoldnews, and ilmiwap.

Martin gives a virtual seminar at the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Physics (CFTC) of Lisbon University.
Azeem's and Alessio's paper entitled "Nanostructured, Fluid Bicontinuous Gels for Continuous Flow Liquid-Liquid Extraction" is accepted for publication in Advanced Materials.

Shankar has been selected by the Chemical Engineering Department at Rowan University as the recipient of the 2022 Elizabeth Slater Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Graduate Studies. Congratulations!
Martin gives a seminar entitled "Flowing liquids through fluid bicontinuous gels" at the Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg. Link to tweet
Tessa and Koen start their MSc research projects in the group. Tessa works on surfactant free bijels together with Alessio and Katherine. Koen works together with Henrik and Katherine on polymer postfunctionalization of bijels. Welcome!
Steffen joins the group for his MSc research project. Steffen continues Jelle's research on Janus bijels together with Azeem. Welcome!
2021
Shankar's paper entitled "Centrifugal assembly of helical bijel fibers for pH responsive composite hydrogels" has been accepted for publication in the journal Small. Congratulations!!!
Shankar successfully defends his PhD thesis entitled "Centrifugal Assembly of Bijel Ropes via helical microfluidics". The committee consists of dr. Joe Stanzione, dr. Gary Thompson, dr. Vince Beachley, dr. Robert Hesketh, and Martin. They are very impressed by the research results from Shankar's work and unanimously vote to award a PhD title to Shankar. Congratulations!!!
Alessio gives a great oral presentation entitled "Liquid transport in bijels via electro-osmosis" at the biggest Dutch Chemistry conference Chains.
Cos Hesseling joins the group as a new MSc student with Mariska and Henrik, working on bijel films.
3 new group members: Jesse Steenhoff begins his PhD project about transport phenomena in bijel membranes. Jointly supervised with dr. Lisa Tran, Mengwei Li starts her PhD project on liquid crystals. Stefan Bouts begins his MSc project with Matthijs on conductive bijels. Welcome!
3 oral presentations and 1 poster from our group at the ECIS conference in Athens, Greece! Azeem gives an oral presentation entitled "Stabilizing liquid drops in nonequilibrium shapes by the interfacial crosslinking of nanoparticles". Alessio also presents orally "Liquid transport in bijels via electro-osmosis". Mariska shows a beautiful poster entitled "In situ surface modification of SiO2 nanoparticles for fabrication of bijels". Martin gives a keynote presentation with the title "High-tensile strength, composite bijels through microfluidic twisting".
PhD candidate Henrik Siegel is featured in a documentary on the German TV station NDR (minute 7:40 - 15:00) talking about his MSc research project analysing micro plastic contamination in waste water.
Mariska and Alessio give soundbite presentations about their research projects at the 29th Dutch Soft Matter meeting.
Oral presentation by Shankar at the "95th ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium (Virtual)" in the session Emulsions, Bubbles and Foams at 10 am on Monday 14th of June entitled "Bijel derived hydrogel ropes via microfluidic twisting"
Two oral presentations from our group on the online symposium "Designed Assembly of Colloids at Interfaces: Fundamentals to Applications". Azeem gives a presentation entitled "Stabilizing liquid drops in nonequilibrium shapes by the interfacial crosslinking of nanoparticles" on June 15th at 11:15. Martin gives a presentation on the same day at 16:15, entitled "High Tensile Strength, Composite Bijels through Microfluidic Twisting".
Matthijs joins the lab as a new PhD candidate. Before joining us, Matthijs has worked on Copper based catalysis in the group of Petra de Jongh at Utrecht University and on photocatalytic nanoparticles in the group of Erik Garnett at AMOLF. Welcome!
Azeem gets a front cover illustration in Soft Matter for his paper "Stabilizing liquid drops in nonequilibrium shapes by the interfacial crosslinking of nanoparticles".
Henrik joins the lab as a new PhD candidate. Welcome! Henrik will work on nanostructured membranes for water treatment.
Press release about Martin's NWO Vidi grant from the Faculty of Science at Utrecht University in English, and in Nederlands.

Azeem's gives the "Debye lunch lecture" about his recent paper in Soft Matter. Link to the recorded lecture.
Marijn and Benedikt join the lab as MSc researchers. Welcome! Marijn works with Alessio on droplet polymers and Benedikt works with Katherine on Ultrasound contrast materials.
Azeem's paper entitled "Stabilizing liquid drops in nonequilibrium shapes by the interfacial crosslinking of nanoparticles" just got accepted for publication in Soft Matter. Congrats! This article was invited for the 2021 Emerging Investigator issue of Soft Matter.

Katherine joins the lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Welcome!
2020
Anjana successfully defends her MSc thesis. Congratulations and success for your PhD studies with Dr. Iman Noshadi!!
Another newcomer, Jelle Prinsen joins the group for his MSc thesis. He works together with Azeem on generating porous Janus materials. Welcome!
Georgios Athanasiou joins the group as a MSc student. He works together with Mariska on developing a bijel film coating machine. Welcome!
Shankar's gives an oral presentation entitled "Composite Bijels through Microfluidic Twisting" during the 2020 Virtual AIChE Annual Meeting in the Area 1J session, Particulate and Multiphase Flows: Emulsions and Droplets on Tuesday, Nov 17 8:00 AM.
The Dutch Research Council (NWO) awards the Vidi grant to Martin. Utrecht University features this on Twitter and in press releases (1), (2), (3).

Stephen's paper entitled "Controlling Surfactant Adsorption on Highly Charged Nanoparticles to Stabilize Bijels" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

Shankar's paper entitled "High-tensile strength, composite bijels through microfluidic twisting" has been accepted for publication in Advanced Functional Materials.

Stephen successfully defended his PhD thesis! Congratulations!

Our book chapter entitled Bijels Formed by Solvent Transfer-induced Phase Separation has been published in the book Bijels: Bicontinuous Particle-stabilized Emulsions.

Martin presents the Debye Lunch Lecture entitled Templating Interfacial Nanoparticle Assemblies via in Situ Techniques on the 11th of March at 13:15 in Utrecht University Library, Booth Hall.

Martin visits the Chemical Engineering department at TU-Delft and gives a presentation entitled "Tailoring bicontinuous fluidic networks by phase separation and interfacial assembly".

Our group is happy to welcome Mariska as a new PhD candidate.
One more newcomer: Marieke joins the lab as postdoc. Welcome!
Alessio joins the lab as a new PhD candidate. Welcome!
2019
Martin will deliver an invited keynote presentation on December 3rd entitled "Advective Flow in Nanostructured Bijels via Electroosmosis" at the 2019 MRS meeting in Boston, USA (8:30 - 9:00 AM, Hynes, Level 3, Room 306 ).

Stephen received a round of applause after his presentation entitled "Advective Flow in Bicontinuous Interfacially Jammed Emulsion Gels (bijels) for Continuously Operated Liquid-Liquid Extraction " at the 2019 annual AIChE meeting in a talk in Orlando, Florida.

This fall Martin introduced our work in multiple presentations to the Dutch research community:
1. On the Debye Institute 30th anniversary on October 17th,
2. at the 27th Dutch Soft Matter meeting on November 5th,
3. during the Utrecht Chemistry day on November 11th, and
4. during a visit at the University of Twente on November 21st.

On Thursday, Sep. 12th, Martin will give a keynote presentation entitled "Advective flow in nanostructured bijels via electroosmosis" at the ECIS conference in Leuven in the session EMUL3: Emulsions, Pickering Emulsions and Foams, Auditorium AV 91.12 - Faculty of Social Sciences. On Monday, Sep. 9th from 6:00pm - 8:00pm, Martin will also present a poster entitled "Multifunctional Bijel Micro-Ropes by Hydrodynamic In-Situ Twisting" (ID: 622) in Jubilee Hall - University Hall, Naamsestraat 22.

3 oral presentations from our lab on the ACS colloids conference in Atlanta. Azeem presents a talk entitled "Inverted Solvent Transfer Induced Phase Separation for the Fabrication of Mechanically Robust Bijels" at 1:30 pm and Matthew presents "Making bijels mechanically better membranes by manipulating bicontinuous morphologies" at 1:50 pm, both on Wednesday, June 19th in track G: Emulsions, Bubbles & Foams .
Shankar presents "Multifunctional Bijel Micro-Ropes by Hydrodynamic In-Situ Twisting" at 9:30 on Tuesday, June 18th in track J: Formulation, Processing & Manufacturing on the Colloidal Length Scale and Beyond. Come see their talks!!

Martin accepted a position as assistant professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, within the Department of Chemistry. Starting in June, he will work in the Van 't Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloid Chemistry, which is part of the Debye Institute of Nanomaterials Science.

Martin presents an invited joint seminar entitled "3D Flow Analysis in Bijels Reconfigured for Interfacial Catalysis" in the departments of Chemistry and Engineering at Brown University.

Stephen's paper entitled "Designing Bijels formed by Solvent Transfer Induced Phase Separation with Functional Nanoparticles" has been accepted for publication in Soft Matter. Congratulations!!!

Our review article in honor of the late Prof. Helmuth Moehwald "Templating interfacial nanoparticle assemblies via in-situ techniques" is accepted for publication in Langmuir.

Noah, an undergraduate researcher in the lab, landed a job at Johnson Matthey. Congratulations!!! We will certainly miss Noah, but we are also very proud, and especially delighted that Noah's hard work and contribution to our paper about hollow fiber membranes was well perceived during his candidacy for the position at Johnson Matthey.
2018
Giuseppe's paper entitled Robust Bijels for Reactive Separation via Silica-Reinforced Nanoparticle Layers has been published online in ACS-Nano. Congratulations!

Martin will give an invited lecture entitled 3D-Flow Analysis in Bijels Reconfigured for Interfacial Catalysis (3D-FABRIC) at the Debye Institute of Nanomaterials Science at Utrecht University.

Undergraduate student Noah Hough wins third place for his poster "Nanocomposite Membrane Fabrication by Solvent Transfer Induced Phase Separation" at the 2018 AIChE meeting. Congratulations!
Our lab at the AIChE meeting: Oral presentations by Stephen "Towards Continuously Operated Chemical Reactions in Bicontinuous Systems: Making Robust Strips-Bijels for Microfluidic Applications" on November 1st, 1:30-1:45pm and Martin "Shaping Nanoparticle Fingerprints at the Interface of Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Droplets" on November 1st, 9:45-10:00am both in Omni William Penn Hotel, Conference Center A. Poster presentations by Troy "Molecular Transport of Hydrophobic Substances across Polyelectrolyte Multilayers" and Noah "Nanocomposite Membrane Fabrication by Solvent Transfer Induced Phase Separation".

American Chemical Society awards Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grant.

Rowan News highlights our paper about shaping nanoparticle fingerprints in a press release.

Azeem joins the lab as a new PhD student coming all the way from India. Welcome!
Lisa's paper is accepted for publication in Science Advances!!! This is also Martin's first last author paper. Congratulations!

Martin's project "3D Flow Analysis in Bijels Reconfigured for Interfacial Catalysis" is awarded the ERC Starting grant.

Stephen's talk entitled "Towards Continuously Operated Chemical Reactions in Bicontinuous Systems: Making Robust Strips-Bijels for Microfluidic Applications." (November 1st, 1:30-1:45pm, Omni William Penn Hotel - Conference Center A) is accepted for oral presentation at the AIChE meeting. Congratulations!
Also Martin will present a talk with the title "Shaping Nanoparticle Fingerprints at the Interface of Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Droplets" (November 1st, 9:45-10:00am, Omni William Penn Hotel - Conference Center A) at the same meeting. Tag team!

Stephen gives his first conference talk at the ACS colloids at Penn State. Exciting!

Rowan University seed fund was awarded to the lab. The award of $10,000 will be used for purchasing a Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) instrumentation for coating characterization. Hurrah!

Martin gives an invited talk at the IACIS conference in Rotterdam in honour of his PhD supervisor Helmuth Moehwald.

Matthew and Shankar join the NIE-lab for PhD studies. Also Anjana, Sarina, and Troy will do summer research in the lab. Welcome!
The National Science Foundation is now supporting our research through the NSF-CAREER award. This will provide us with financial support for 5 years, totalling $500,000.

Gang's paper "One-Step Generation Salt-Responsive Polyelectrolyte Microcapsules via Surfactant Organized Nanoscale Interfacial Complexation in Emulsions (SO NICE)" was highlighted on the front-cover of the special issue "Early Career Authors in Fundamental Colloid and Interface Science" of the journal Langmuir.

2017
Several Press releases highlight our paper about bijel derived separation membranes: Penn News, Penn Engineering, phys.org, EurekAlert, nano werk, Azo Nano, Science Daily.
And when we thought it could not be better, we found out that also Lisa's paper about liquid crystal pattern formation was highlighted in Penn News, EurekAlert, phys.org, nano werk, Science Daily!!

New paper published in Physical Review X: "Change in Stripes for Cholesteric Shells via Anchoring in Moderation".

New paper published in Nature Communications: "Multifunctional Nanocomposite Hollow Fiber Membranes by Solvent Transfer Induced Phase Separation".

Lisa video about cholesteric liquid crystal shells wins the 5th place in the Nikon Small World Video Competition. Congratulations!

Our paper, entitled "One-Step Generation Salt-Responsive Polyelectrolyte Microcapsules via Surfactant Organized Nanoscale Interfacial Complexation in Emulsions (SO NICE)" is accepted for publication in Langmuir.

The Lab has moved to Engineering Hall room 220 for the summer 2017. The lab is always busy with 4 undergraduate (Noah, Robert, Trevor, Jonathan) and 1 graduate researcher (Steven). We will move back to the renovated lab space in Rowan Hall during the Fall 2017.
2016
I am excited to teach and research starting in January 2017 as an assistant professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at Rowan University.

My new paper entitled "In-situ mechanical testing of nanostructured bijel fibers" is accepted for publication in ACS-Nano.

Bijels in the news: Press releases on Penn News, Phys.org, Technology.org, Science Daily, AZo Materials, Newswise.com increase the visibility of our newly published article on bijels.

2015
Advanced Materials has awarded us the front cover illustration for our publication entitled Continuous Fabrication of Hierarchical and Asymmetric Bijel Microparticles, Fibers and Membranes by Solvent Transfer-induced Phase Separation (STRIPS)

A video made by me has won the animation award at the Penn Nanoday. Here the link to the video.

Prof. Daeyeon Lee presents my work about Bijels at the Annual Meeting of the Polymer Society of Korea (PSK) (10/07/15) and the Annual Meeting of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) (11/09/15)

Invited by Dr. Paul CleggI have spend 4 wonderful days as a visitor at the University of Edinburgh and presented my work about multiple emulsions and Bijels

Advanced Materials accepted our new publication about bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels (Bijels) for publication

My poster about multiple emulsion formation by phase separation was awarded the poster prize on the 5th International Colloids Conference in Amsterdam

2014
My article about multiple emulsion formation by phase separation was highlighted in the journal Science.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) awarded me a research fellowship for a postdoctoral position at the University of Pennsylvania
