Last week the 2026 Summer graduation ceremony took place for the school of physics and astronomy. Among them were Dr Thomas Sayner, Dr Michele Duarte Tonet and Dr Marianna Leite De Avellar, all of whom received their PhD after years of great research in the group. Congratulations!

Shikha Rani Barik is joining our group as a PhD student! She will work with Ifor and Jean-Charles, researching 'Organic hyperbolic Metamaterials(OHM)' for optoelectronic applications. She obtained her Chemistry BSc from Sambalpur University in Odisha and an MSc from the Indian Institute of Science.

Last Saturday Ifor hosted a Potluck open to all members of the group, including three alumni Ashu Bansal, Andrew Matheson and Saydulla Persheyev. Everyone enjoyed a varied and delicious selection of foods, as well as great conversations with new and familiar faces under a relatively dry weather.

Last week the school had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Donna Strickland, Nobel Laureate in Physics 2018, for the Sibbett Memorial Lecture 2026, with her talked titled “From Nonlinear Optics to High-Intensity Laser Physics,” in which she shared both her personal scientific journey.

Last week, Dr Hassan Hafeez and Andrew Docherty participated in the TayHealthTech Gathering at the Apex Hotel in Dundee. Their project, which focuses on the development of a wearable device for photodynamic therapy, has been selected for funding by TayHealthTech.

Last Wednesday Ifor and Hassan presented some of the research conducted in the group to a wide audience of non-scientists during the Pint of Science event. This was a great event featuring interdisciplinary researchers in an effort to share some exciting advancements with the general public!

Last week the 2026 PhD Annual Assessment Conference was held, and featured presentations from Kaiyang and Yuchen, as well as posters from Liam and Saban. They got the opportunity to present their research to the entire physics postgraduate cohort as well as engage in interesting conversations!

Four members of the OSC presented work at the ICEL in Namur, Belgium this week. Ifor and Eli’s talks discussed how to understand and overcome efficiency roll-off in OLEDs including work in these papers: doi.org/10.1021/acs.... doi.org/10.1002/adfm...

Last week Sagarika Mishra attended SPIE Photonics and presented her work on “Luminescent Organic Nanoaggregates for Pollution Detection in Water” done in the OSC, engaging with talks from the experts in the organic semiconductor community. @ezc-group.bsky.social

Last week while in Strasbourg, Sagarika gave a talk at IPCMS, followed by engaging discussions with Dr Anthony Daleo and his group members. Thank you Dr Daleo for welcoming Sagarika!

Congratulations to the authors of "OLED-based photodynamic therapy treats bacterial infection in a preclinical ex vivo burn wound model", just accepted to Oxford's Burns and Trauma journal. This work was done in collaboration with KU Leuven in Belgium. DOI: doi.org/10.1093/burn...

Congratulations to the authors of "Photoluminescence Turn-On Method to Determine the Kinetics of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Materials", just published in Advanced Physics Research. This work was done in collaboration with @ezc-group.bsky.social DOI: doi.org/10.1002/apxr...

Last week the group held a farewell social event to Dr Ross Gillanders, who will be moving to the Netherlands with Lightwater sensors, a spin-out from from the group. Ross will be leading the company and working closely with investors from there, and we wish him all the best!

Last week the group had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Ji-Seon Kim from University of Oxford. She presented the colloquium titled Fascinating Molecular Nature of Organic Semiconductors, where she delved into their different molecular properties and how these can be modified.

Last week some members of the group attended the SU2P symposium in Glasgow. Ifor, Olga and Masato can be seen attending the conference dinner. While in Glasgow, they took the opportunity to visit Dr. Gordon Hedley’s (group alumni) lab.

Congratulations to the authors of "A trade‐off between efficiency and stability in a class of sky‐blue organic light‐emitting diodes" just published in FlexMat. This work was done in collaboration with @ezc-group.bsky.social, and Fluxim AG in Switzerland. DOI: doi.org/10.1002%2Ffl...

Congratulations to Dr Thomas Sayner for completing his PhD viva earlier this week! After the viva there were some celebrations and parting gifts from the group. We wish him all the best with his new position in Spain!

Last Friday some members of the group enjoyed a well deserved break from work to catch up over some drinks. Due to the recent closure of St Andrews' Brewdog, the group's social was hosted at Brewco, followed by a hearty dinner at Tulsi!

The 27th International Conference on Science and Technology of Synthetic Electronic Materials (ICSM 2026) is still accepting abstracts, with the submission deadline being extended to March 17th. We encourage applications to ensure a strong and diverse scientific program.

Congratulations to Dr Marianna Leite De Avellar on successfully passing her PhD Viva!

Last week we were pleased to host St Andrews alumni Sir Professor Michael Berry who gave an interesting and insightful colloquium "A plurality of optical singularities: intensity, phase, polarisation".

Ifor attended Photonics West in San Francisco last week, the world's largest photonics conference. He gave a talk on the groups advancements on Visible Light Communication, some of which are linked to the HISOPE project.

Members of the group enjoyed the Scottish University Physics Alliance (SUPA) Energy Theme meeting and a Solar Power course, followed by dinner with lecturers. We had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. David Cohen, Dr Stephen Reynolds andDr Scott Doyle for guest lectures.

Congratulations to Dr Aswin Sasi for completing his PhD viva for his thesis 'Let there be light: Development and modelling of a novel illumination system to improve light availability, biomass production and pigment yield in photobioreactors'.

Following another year of successful research the OSO group finished the year with a deep clean of the evaporator and their annual Christmas dinner celebration. Happy holidays everyone!

This week we have been pleased to welcome Dr Nagarjuna Puvvala and Chu-Hsiang (Allen) Hsu from National Taiwan University as part of our growing collaboration in organic semiconductor optoelectronic research.

Congratulations Dr Michele Duarte Tonet!

We are happy to welcome Olga Filippova to the group. She will be supervised by Prof Ifor Samuel and Prof Carlos Penedo, and her PhD research will focus on understanding the photophysical properties of conjugated polymer chains at the single-molecule level.

Congratulations to the authors of "Exploring the Impact of the Presence of 9,9′-Spirobifluorene Moieties on the Performance of Carbonyl-Based Multiresonant Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Organic Light-Emitting Diodes" published in Advanced Optical Materials. DOI: doi.org/10.1002/adom....

We would like to congratulate Martin McLaren on receiving the IOP Technician Award. He received this award for his work as technical manager, overseeing operations of the Centre for Designer Quantum Materials since its inception. Congratulations Martin! www.iop.org/about/awards...

Yesterday the School of Physics and Astronomy held the Wilson Sibbett memorial symposium. The day featured several talks from Wilson's friends and colleagues who spoke movingly about his impact on their lives, research, and the field of ultrafast photonics.

Ifor receives the Thomas Young Prize Congratulations to Ifor on receiving the Thomas Young Prize for world-leading research into OLEDs, organic lasers and their applications in technology and medicine. This prize recognises that he has made distinguished contributions to the field of optics.

Last week's group coffee saw us welcoming two new members to the group, Masato Kato for his PhD and Dr Buddhika Karunathilaka as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Masato brought some green tea chocolates for everyone to enjoy!

This week we are very happy to welcome Dr Buddhika Karunathilaka to the group. He will be supervised by Prof Ifor Samuel and Prof Graham Turnbull, and his research will focus on developing organic lasers that operate under continuous-wave (CW) conditions.

This week we are pleased to welcome Masato Kato to the group. His PhD, supervised by Dr Jean-Charles Ribierre and Prof Ifor Samuel, will focus on researching Organic Hyperbolic Metamaterials for optoelectronic applications.

Ifor attended the Optical Probes meeting in Fukuoka last week and gave an invited talk. Also attending were four former OSC members who now lead their own research groups (Prof John Lupton, Prof P. Rajamalli, Dr Gordon Hedley and Prof Paloma dos Santos).

This week we are pleased to welcome Yamini Sharma to the group. She is visiting us from the IPCMS in Strasbourg. During her one month stay she will be researching the photophysics of TADF materials.

Today is international day in the school of Physics and Astronomy. It is a great opportunity to celebrate the diversity in the OSC that helps make our research world class.

Congratulations to the authors of the paper “OLED illuminated metasurfaces for holographic image projection” which has just been published with Light: Science & Applications. DOI: doi.org/10.1038/s413...

We are happy to welcome Chico Paulics Bresler to the group for his PhD on the HISOPE project, researching fast organic optoelectronic materials and devices. He is jointly supervised by Prof Ifor Samuel and Prof Graham Turnbull.

Congratulations to Jingxiang, Dongyang, & Yan for their paper accepted in @angewandtechemie.bsky.social ,(doi.org/10.1002/anie...) work in collab with Ifor Samuel's group and @jeannecrassousiscr.bsky.social ⚗️🧪@standrewschem.bsky.social @standrewsosc.bsky.social #TADFSolutions

This week we are pleased to welcome Shintaro Kohata to the group. He is visiting us from the Adachi lab at Kyushu University. During his two month stay he will be investigating photophysics in novel TADF systems.

Today we celebrated Ifor's birthday with some cake and pastries. Happy birthday Ifor, we hope you enjoy the presents!

Last month, Aswin attended the Algal BBB conference in Arizona, US. He gave a talk on 'Unlocking the optimal wavelength for different growth phases for Arthrospira platensis in a cylindrical airlift photobioreactor'.

Congratulations to Liam, Kou, and our collaborators at the University of Cambridge, led by Harald Haas for the paper "Visible light communication using thermally activated delayed fluorescent OLEDs". DOI: lnkd.in/er_6ZuiQ

Recently Sagarika attended the International Meeting on Chemical sensors in Freiburg, Germany where she presented some of her recent work.

Working with the team of Prof Harald Haas we have demonstrated a record communication rate in OLEDs. The new paper "High-speed organic light-emitting diodes based on dinaphthylperylene achieving 4-Gbps communication" published with Advanced Photonics. DOI: doi.org/10.1117/1.AP...

This week Ifor gave presented work on high brightness OLEDs and lasers at the Excited State Processes conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Former group member Prof John Lupton spoke directly after him.

Yesterday OSC members had the opportunity to attend an excellent seminar "Digital Discovery for Organic Electronics" by Prof. Alessandro Troisi where he was presented with his RSC Tilden Prize for Chemistry medal. @ezc-group.bsky.social

We are pleased to announce that our paper "Enabling the Next-Generation Network of Networks" has now been published with IEEE. We have worked closely on this with Prof Harald Haas and his team at the LiFi Research and Development Centre at the University of Cambridge. DOI: doi.org/10.1109/MVT....