Recent News

Kirigami article published!

Sonia’s work developing a strain sensor using the principles of kirigami and split ring resonators is published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces! Excellent work Sonia and co-authors!

Kirigami enabled microwave resonator arrays for wireless, flexible, passive strain sensing

Cory joins OPERA

We are pleased  to welcome Cory Pope as the latest member of the OPERA lab. Cory joins us from BCIT and will be working on the next generation of durable anti-icing surfaces. Welcome!

Chat with the PM

The OPERA Lab was honoured to chat with PM Trudeau and Minister Joyce Murray about our face shield project with PRE Labs Inc. You can see Anu, Brad Field, and I below amongst the other invited guests!

PFC-free textiles video

UBCO put  together a great video on Sadaf’s latest publication, Rational design of perfluoro-compound free textiles

 

Sadaf’s work on sustainable textiles is published!

Our collaboration with Arc’teryx towards the development of an oil-repellent textile finish that doesn’t utilize toxic perfluoro-chemicals has produced its first publication. Sadaf’s work was published today in Nature Sustainability. Congratulations Sadaf and co-authors!

Rational design of perfluorocarbon-free oleophobic textiles

I was also asked to write a ‘Behind the Paper’ by the Nature folks, and you can find my blog-style entry on the backstory of Sadaf’s work at: https://bit.ly/33zPWpR. Comments welcome!

 

Sadaf becomes a PhD candidate!

Sadaf has passed her candidacy exam with flying colours and is now a full fledged PhD Candidate. Congratulations Sadaf!

 

Behrooz’s work gaining media attention!

Behrooz’s work for making any surface omniphobic has started to receive media attention!

UBC’s press release

Infotel.ca

ScienceDaily

phys.org

Sciences Avenir (in French)

Asia Pacific Coatings

NSERC COVID-19 Grant Awarded!

I am pleased to announce that NSERC has funded our project developing upgraded face shields for enhanced COVID-19 protection, in partnership with PRE Labs Inc. Great job Drs. Pillai and Zhao on putting together an excellent application. We will be investigating how coatings can allow face shields to be disinfected with water alone, and not very frequently! By partnering with PRE Labs, who currently manufacture > 1000 face shields per day, our innovations can start helping Canadians as soon as possible!

Earlier story about our collaboration

PRE Labs Inc.

NSERC’s COVID-19 Call for Proposals

New Publication!

Behrooz’s work on making any substrate highly liquid repellent is published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces! His artwork was also selected as a Supplementary Cover image! Check out Design and High-Resolution Characterization of Silicon Wafer-like Omniphobic Liquid Layers Applicable to Any Substrate. His coatings were so good we had to come up with a more accurate characterization technique just to evaluate them, not too bad.

Anti-fogging quick fix

Doing what we can!