Oxford Colloid Group

Professor Dirk Aarts

Professor of Chemistry
Student* of Christ Church

Dirk studied chemistry at the University of Utrecht, and completed his PhD in 2005 at the Van ’t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloidal Chemistry under the supervision of Prof Henk Lekkerkerker. He subsequently moved to the Ecole Normale Supérieure as a Marie Curie Fellow, joining the group of Prof. Daniel Bonn. In 2007 he took up a lecturership at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory of the University of Oxford, combined with a Studentship at Christ Church. He was made full professor in 2013.

More about Professor Dirk Aarts

Dr Lucia Parolini

Droplet sorting using microfluidics and fluorescence

Lucia is from Italy, where she studied her undergraduate and master degrees in Physics at the Università Statale di Milano. She obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Pietro Cicuta, where she studied lipid membranes. After a further year in Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher, she joined the Oxford Colloid Group as part of a collaboration with the group of Prof. John Frater in the Nuffield Department of Medicine.

Lucia is using microfluidics to sort droplets based on fluorescence, which will be applied to sort latent HIV infected cells for sequencing. These cells persist during antiretroviral therapy and are the major obstacle to the eradication of the virus. Outside of the lab, Lucia loves to travel and visits new places whenever she can.

Dr Clare Rees-Zimmerman

Measurement of particle interactions

Clare is a chemical engineer by training, having completed her undergraduate (integrated Masters) and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge. For her MEng project, she modelled the patterns formed by blood spots during drying, under the supervision of Prof. Alex Routh. The project is important for developing accurate paper diagnostics using blood spots. She also undertook a number of industrial summer internships, including in R&D at Procter & Gamble. Her PhD work examined how a mixture of differently sized particles self assembles in a thin film as it dries.

Clare moved to Oxford in October 2022 as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, hosted by the Oxford Colloid group. Her research interests include thin film materials, diffusiophoretic motion, and multiphase flow. She is currently working on measuring interparticle interactions. Outside of work, Clare can be found playing the violin, learning languages, and keeping active.

Dr Jack Holland

In July 2022 I completed my DPhil (PhD) working on the physical properties of model biomolecular condensates, and in August of the same year I began a short-term contract as a postdoctoral researcher in the same laboratory. The model systems I work with somewhat replicate the sorts of novel liquid states recently observed in biological cells. We are interested in the relationship between their constituent proteins and their macroscopic properties, with implications for basic science and medical research.

Outside of research, I have a passion for the teaching of and communication of general science; with experience teaching from GCSE up to postgraduate level, and organising science events for my local community.

Callum Beck

Droplet Microfluidics for Single-cell Sorting

Callum studied undergraduate chemistry at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. His Part II research project involved developing isothermal DNA amplification techniques to use in a microfluidic pipeline for single cell sorting as part of a collaboration between the Aarts group (Oxford Colloid Group) and the Frater group (Nuffield Department of Medicine).

After completing this, he continued this collaboration as a DPhil student, now working on combining hydrogels with the above microfluidic pipeline in order to trap cells and DNA within beads while still being able to wash with various reagents - with a focus to achieve both lysis and subsequent DNA amplification while maintaining single-cell resolution. Outside of the lab Callum is a multi-instrumentalist, mostly playing traditional Irish and Scottish folk music, and can regularly be found performing with the Oxford University Ceilidh Band.

Devinder Srai

Droplet Microfluidics for Single-cell Sorting

Devinder comes from a biology background with a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and has a particular interest in immunology. Her research aims to develop a novel microfluidic technology that allows single cell sequencing of up to a million T cells, a key agent of the body’s cellular immune response, without common pitfalls currently in the field such as a reliance on barcoding, UMIs and multiplexing.  

This technology will be applied to different clinical states to fully understand the associated immune responses. She also has a keen interest in bioinformatics and hopes to leverage machine learning techniques to pinpoint the motifs most correlated with protection, with scope to develop novel immune-based therapeutics.  

Part II Students 2022-23

Joseph Daws Joseph Daws Utilizing LAMMPS to simulate nematic phases of rod-like particles. Joe is from Jersey and studies chemistry at St Catherines College. He is focused on using molecular simulations to model the nematic phase of rod-like paricles. This is mostly using the software package LAMMPS. LAMMPS is a specified software used to simulate molecular systems. In this case, Joe is mostly simulating systems of rods, cells and polymers

Shivani Abensour Particle insertion model Shivani is from France and did a year of “prépa” before deciding to come to Oxford to study chemistry. She joined the Oxford Colloid Group as a part II to work on computational simulations to measure interactions between particles. There is also an interest in measuring the chemical potential from these simulated systems. Outside of chemistry, she is passionate about basketball and plays for the university. She also loves to cook, and relates this passion to chemistry through an interest in molecular gastronomy.

Mohammed Rajani

Colloidal adsorption at interfaces

Mohammed began his undergraduate chemistry degree at Hertford College, Oxford in 2019. His part II research project investigates the behaviour of colloidal particles with a moving solution-gel agarose interface.

Outside the lab, Mohammed spends much of his time playing logic puzzles, developing his coding skills and working on outreach events.