Thomas Graham Award for Prof Wilson Poon
Congratulations to Professor Wilson Poon who has been awarded the Thomas Graham Lecture, an award made for work in colloid science by the Royal Society of Chemistry & the Society of Chemical Industry.
The Thomas Graham Lecture is a mid-career award for a researcher who has established an international reputation in colloid science and has made distinguished contributions in this field.
Prof Poon is internationally known for his work using 'model' colloids to study phenomena that are ubiquitous across condensed matter and statistical physics, particularly the structure and dynamics of arrested states such as glasses and gels. More recently, he has focussed on the flow of concentrated suspensions of bigger, granular particles, where the phenomenon of shear thickening (‘running on corn starch’) is ubiquitous. To industrial practitioners, such suspensions are widely known to be capricious and difficult to control. Professor Poon’s work has helped bring about a revolution in understanding the flow of these suspensions, examples of which range from molten chocolate through ceramic pastes to concrete. This new understanding is now being applied to solve industrial problems such as improving the extrusion of catalytic converters for vehicles. In 2012, he set up the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership (ECFP) to coordinate and facilitate collaborations with industry. To date ECFP has worked with more than 40 companies spread over a dozen sectors.
The physics of active particles is another area of Prof Poon’s interest. These colloids are intrinsically non-equilibrium, in that they continually transduce free energy from their surroundings to engage in activities such as growth and self-propulsion. His research group studies both active particles in the form of bacteria as well as synthetic colloidal swimmers. Their long-term goal is to discover and understand new modes of collective behaviour in active particle systems. The results should provide impetus for theory development in a frontier area of statistical mechanics, lead to new material designs, and throw light on selected biological phenomena.
The award is named after Scottish scientist Thomas Graham, who studied medicine in Edinburgh after having learnt chemistry in his native Glasgow. He is one of the founders of colloid science.