The winner of the Malvern Instruments £250 prize for the best student poster presented at the recent UK Colloids 2011 conference was Thakshila Balasuriya from The University of Melbourne, for her work describing ‘Dynamic Forces between Bubbles with Switchable Peptide Surfactants'. Thakshila is a third year PhD student in the Dynamic Interfacial Forces Group (www.chemeng.unimelb.edu.au/dig/) and her thesis work is focused on nanoscale interactions forces in biomolecular systems in soft matter.

Malvern was one of the sponsors of UK Colloids 2011, a new international colloid and surface science symposium, which was jointly organized by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Colloid and Interface Science Group and the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) Colloid and Surface Science Group. The event took place in London, UK, from 4-6 July. 

Dr Samiul Amin, Strategic Technology Group Manager for Malvern Instruments, chaired the conference  theme on ‘Characterization of Colloids and Complex Fluids' and was also part of the judging panel for the posters. "There were a large number of student posters and the standard was exceptionally high," he said. "It was a pleasure to be part of the judging process and I'd like to congratulate all those who contributed to the poster sessions on their hard work and dedicated research. I am very pleased that Malvern was able to make this award." www.malvern.com