Tag Archives: Nicholas White

The world’s smallest machines at Vancouver’s (Canada) May 27, 2014 Café Scientifique

Vancouver’s next Café Scientifique is being held in the back room of the The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], Vancouver, Canada), on Tuesday, May 27,  2014 at 7:30 pm. Here’s the meeting description (from the May 21, 2014 announcement),

Our speaker is Dr. Nicholas White from UBC Chemistry. The title and abstract of his talk is:

The world’s smallest machines

In the last 50 years, chemists have developed the ability to produce increasingly intricate and complex molecules. One example of this is the synthesis of “interlocked molecules”: two or more separate molecules that are mechanically threaded through one another (like links of a chain). These interlocked molecules offer potential use for a range of different applications. In particular they have been developed for use as molecular machines: devices that are only a few nanometers in size, but can perform physical work in response to a stimulus (e.g. light, heat). This talk will describe the development of interlocked molecules, and explore their potential applications as nano-devices.

Nicholas (Nick) White is a member of the MacLachlan Group. The group’s leader, Mark MacLachlan was mentioned here in a March 25, 2011 post regarding his Café Scientifique talk on beetles, biomimcry, and nanocrystalline cellulose (aka, cellulose nanocrystals). As well, MacLachlan was mentioned in a May 21, 2014 post about the $!.65M grant he received for his NanoMAT: NSERC CREATE Training Program in Nanomaterials Science & Technology.

As for Nick White, there’s this on the MacLachlan Group homepage, (scroll down about 25% of the way),

Nick completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Otago in his home town of Dunedin, New Zealand (working on transition metal complexes with Prof. Sally Brooker). After a short break working and then travelling, he completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford, working with Prof. Paul Beer making rotaxanes and catenanes for anion recognition applications. He is now a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the MacLachlan group working on supramolecular materials based on triptycene and silsesquioxanes (although he has difficulty convincing people he’s old enough to be a post-doc). Outside of chemistry, Nick is a keen rock climber, and is enjoying being close to the world-class rock at Squamish. He also enjoys running, playing guitar, listening to music, and drinking good coffee.

I wonder if a Café Scientifique presentation is going to be considered as partial fulfillment for the professional skills-building requirement of the MacLachlan’s NanoMAT: NSERC CREATE Training Program in Nanomaterials Science & Technology.