Developing sensors by mimicking nature’s colour mechanisms

Dr. Ahu Gümrah Dumanli-Parry is a Materials Chemist and the first recipient of the bp-ICAM Kathleen Lonsdale Research Fellowship in 2019 for her work on bio-inspired advanced materials. Dr Dumanli-Parry’s research group (Bio-inspired Functional Materials – BioFuM) focuses on understanding of the self-assembly process in nature and mimicking it to produce structurally ordered materials via the self-assembly process.

With her research group, Dr Dumanli-Parry investigates the complex relationship between the intrinsic properties of the colloidal building blocks and the physical effects that modulate the self-assembly process to build active matter for sensing technologies and shape morphing systems as well as light harvesting applications. Thus, most of the research activities in her group research efforts goes into tailoring shape, size and surface chemistry of building colloidal nano and submicron scale particles from sustainable resources and using green chemistries.

Originally scheduled for September 2022, unforeseen circumstances meant this talk had to be postponed and rescheduled. We were pleased to welcome Dr. Dumanli-Parry in December.

Following her talk, Dr. Dumanli-Parry offered a summary note: “How butterflies, beetles and flowers will inspire next-generation materials”. You will find it here.