• 29th August 2022 - Larisa gives an invited talk to EuChemS 2022 Chemistry Congress held in Lisbon, Portugal, presenting the most important results of the ERC project ChemLife. The talk was entitled "Bioinspired 3D Micro-Structures and Micro-vehicles – Design, Fabrication and Function". See some snapshots of Larisa's presentation here.

• 29th June 2022 - Larisa gives an invited talk to the workshop on Micro/Nanorobots for Medicine as part of the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics (26th - 29th June 2022). Her talk was entitled "Responsive Micro-actuators
  and sensors fabricated by direct laser writing". This was a fantastic workshop on micro/nano robots covering a broad range of topics. 

• 29th June 2022 - PhD candidate in the Florea group, Alexa Ennis, gives an oral presentation to the the 9th Forum on New Materials (CIMTEC 2022) entitled "4D Sugar Responsive Microstructures Fabricated via Two Photon Polymerisation".

• 28th June 2022 - Dr. Jason Delente gives an oral presentation to the 9th Forum on New Materials (CIMTEC 2022) entitled "Two-photon Polymerisation of 3D PEDOT:PSS Composite Microstructures".

• 28th June 2022 - Larisa gives an oral presentation to the 9th Forum on New Materials (CIMTEC 2022) entitled "Direct Laser Writing of Responsive Polymer Micro-structures - Towards Soft Robotics at the Micro-scale", with contributions from Teodora Faraone, Srikanth Kolagatla, Alexa Ennis, Luisa Lavelle and Colm Delaney. 

• 27th June 2022 - PhD candidate in the Florea group, Annael Sort-Montenegro, gives an oral presentation to the 9th Forum on New Materials (CIMTEC 2022) entitled "Characterisation and Development of Polycationic Electro-Active hydrogels". This work contained contributions from Maya Kaikov, Erika Deasy, Luke Dowling and Colm Delaney.

• Dr. Jason Delente is one of this year's winners of the Science as Art competition as part of the 2022 MRS Spring Meeting. Congratulations, Jason! What a beautiful micro water lily. 

• 24th May 2022 - PhD candidate in the Florea group, Luisa Lavelle, gives an oral presentation the the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting - Online event, entitled "Direct Laser Writing of Complex 3D Ag Nanoparticle Patterns Inside Prefabricated Polymer Microstructures".

• 11th May 2022 - PhD candidate in the Florea group, Amrutha Augustine, presents her poster at the the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, Hawaii, USA, entitled "Direct Laser Writing of Silica Nanoparticle Composites for Mechanical Reinforcement of Hydrogel Networks".

• 10th May 2022 - Larisa gives an oral presentation to the the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, Hawaii, USA, entitled "Photonic Micro-Actuators"

• 10th May 2022 - Dr. Colm Delaney gives an oral presentation to the the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, Hawaii, USA, entitled "Direct Laser Writing of Bioinspired Functional Materials" for which he receives the award for best presentation given by an Early Career Researcher. Congratulations, Colm!

• 10th May 2022 - PhD candidate in the Florea group, Annael Sort-Montenegro gives an oral presentation to the the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, Hawaii, USA, entitled "Electro-Actuators Based on Polycationic Hydrogel Networks".

• 10th May 2022 - PhD candidate in the Florea group, Alexa Ennis gives an oral presentation to the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, Hawaii, USA, entitled "Fabrication and Design of 4D Hydrogel Microstructures Displaying Reversible Sugar Induced Actuation".

• 9th May 2022 - Dr. Jason Delente gives a great talk to the the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, Hawaii, USA, entitled "3D Fabrication of PEDOT:PSS Containing Microstructures via Two-Photon Polymerization" that presents his results on the EU FET-OPEN 5D Nanoprinting project.

• 9th May 2022 - Larisa is co-organising a symposium at the 2022 MRS Fall Meeting, together with Dr. Virgilio Mattoli, Prof. Eva Blasco and Prof. Shlomo Magdassi. The symposium was entitled SF14: Novel Frontiers in 3D and 4D Multi-Photon Micro-Fabrication—Materials, Methods and Applications, and gathered experts in materials, and applications for direct laser writing. The symposium was co-sponsored by the EU FET-OPEN Project 5D Nanoprinting, led by Dr. Virgilio Mattoli.

• 5th April 2022 - Larisa gives an invited talk as part of The 3DMM2O Conference 2022 - 3D Nano- and Micro-Manufacturing: Technology and Technical Application organised in Shontal Monastery, Germany (3 - 8 April 2022). Her talk was entitled "4D Micro-Structures – Functionality with a Splash of Colour".

• 11th March 2022 - The Florea group welcomes the visit of Dr. Virgilio Mattoli, collaborator and coordinator of the EU🇪🇺 funded FET-OPEN 5D NanoPrinting Project. 

• 28th of February 2022 - Larisa is part of the AMBER team to meet the EU🇪🇺 Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. A really fantastic and inspiring meeting. I shared this photo of us, celebrating women in science. 

• 19th April 2021 - Larisa gives an invited talk entitled "Soft Micro-Sensors and Micro-Actuators Fabricated by Direct Laser Writing'' to the 2021 Virtual MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit, as part of the SOFT ROBOTICS Symposium organised by Prof. Guang-Zhong Yang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Prof. Donglei (Emma) Fan, The University of Texas at Austin, Prof. Peer Fischer, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Prof. Bradley Nelson, ETH Zürich.

• 5th April 2021 - Larisa talks about her experience in applying for the ERC grant and the ChemLife success, in the new episode of the Exploring Research Careers Podcast series hosted by Linda Ryan. You can listen here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7858248-dr-larisa-florea

• 1st April 2021 - Florea Lab welcomes Luisa Lavelle as a PhD candidate working on the EU FET-OPEN Project 5D Nanoprinting.

• 8th February 2021 - Florea Lab welcomes Jason Delente who starts as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the group! 

• 13th October 2020 - Press Release of the FET-OPEN 5D NanoPrinting Project! Super excited that our group in School of Chemistry and AMBER is part of this project led by IIT in Italy! Read more about it here: 

       http://ambercentre.ie/news/single/trinity-researchers-awarded-550k-to-develop-innovative-nano-and-micro-devic​

• 1st October 2020 Florea Lab welcomes Amrutha Augustine who starts her PhD funded by the ERC-Stg ChemLife.

• 1st June 2020 Florea Lab welcomes Luke Dowling (School of Engineering) as part of the team! Luke's work, funded under the ERC-Stg ChemLife, is on the development of Finite-element simulation for the 4D structures at the core of ChemLife.

• 27th January 2020 Larisa is mentioned as a success story in the IRC STRATEGIC PLAN 2020-2024 (page 17). LF: Indeed, obtaining the IRCSET PhD Scholarship constituted the start of my career and played the most significant role in my future development as a researcher. The IRCSET PhD Scholarship gave me the opportunity to move from my hometown in Romania after University, and pursue a PhD abroad in the National Centre for Sensor Research at Dublin City University. During my PhD I had access to world-class facilities in Materials Science, and presented my work to over 30 national and international conferences, with 15 oral presentations and 17 poster presentations in international recognised conferences including 3 microTAS conferences and 4 MRS conferences. My desire to develop and learn, sustained by the fantastic support of the IRC had a profound impact on allowing me to achieve the valued position I currently hold. I am deeply grateful for the opportunities this has presented me. As an IRC Laureate Awardee, I am extremely excited to read in the current strategic plan that the Laureate awards will be embedded within the annual funding cycle of the IRC. 

• 15th January 2020 - Larisa presents an invited talk entitled 'Soft, stimuli-responsive structures with sub-micrometer resolution', at the Gordon Research Conference on Robotics, Ventura, USA.

• 9th January 2020 Florea Lab at The BT Young Scientist! The 19th Young Scientist Exhibition is run annually in Dublin to exhibit the brilliant young scientists of Ireland. This week, Nick Huettner and Deanna Nicdao represented the Chemistry Department and taught children and teenagers the importance of sunscreen against UV light exposure and how smartwatches detect your heart rate. The Florea group was thrilled to meet so many curious minds asking about Chemistry!.

• 6th January 2020 Florea Lab welcomes Myles Rooney. Dr. Rooney is working on a SFI/AMBER-Industry project co-funded by Stryker Neurovascular, Ireland. The project aims to develop novel materials for medical devices. We are very excited about this work - Our smart materials finally reach the real world!

• 6th January 2020 Florea Lab welcomes Annaël Sort Montenegro (M.Sc. in Chemistry and Bio-Engineering) who starts her PhD funded by the ERC-Stg ChemLife.

• 5th November 2019 ChemLife project featured in the Horizon magazine; Read the article about our project here:     
  Nanovehicles that mimic nature could deliver treatments of the future

• 30th October 2019 Florea Lab is now online!​

• 9th September 2019 Welcome Maeve Ward to the Florea Lab! Maeve will undertake her SS Projects in the Florea Lab as part of her MedChem degree.

• 1st October 2019 Florea Lab has just been awarded industry funding from Stryker Neurovascular. The AMBER-Stryker co-funded project looks at the development of Smart Coatings for Medical Devices.

• 8 - 11 July 2019 Alexa presents her poster at the 14th International Conference on Materials Chemistry MC14, Birmingham, UK - 'Highly porous 3D structures fabricated by direct laser writing'.

• 24th June 2019 Florea Lab present at the LASER World of PHOTONICS 2019 Meeting, Munich, Germany. 

• 17 - 20 June 2019 Larisa presents two invited talks at Photonics & Electromagnetics Research Symposium, Rome, Italy Symposium – ‘Biomimetic 3D Micro-structures for Soft Micro-robotics’, invited talk as part of symposium SC3: Light Robotics: Harnessing the Forces of Light for Micro-robotic Actuation and Control.

• 27th May 2019 Larisa presents at EMRS Spring Meeting 2019, Nice, France - ‘Responsive 3D Microstructures Fabricated by Direct Laser Writing’ as part of symposium L: New strategies for smart biointerfaces.

• 10th May 2019 Larisa is part of the AMBER team visiting Henkel X in Dusseldorf, Germany.

• 7th May 2019 Welcome Kathryn Yeow to the Florea Lab! Kathryn will spend 11 weeks over the summer in our lab working on responsive droplets and liquid-liquid interfaces. 

• 1st March 2019 Florea Lab welcomes two more members. Deanna Nicdao (M.Sc. in Biofabrication) and Nick Huettner (M.Sc. in Biofabrication) start their PhDs funded by the ERC-Stg ChemLife.

• 28th February 2019 Larisa delivers her first presentation in the School as part of the Dublin Chemistry Seminar Series – ‘Smart Materials for Movement and Sensing - a molecular change for a macro response’.

• 10th January 2019 Alexa delivers her first poster presentation to the AMBER Scientific Conference 2019, Kilkenny, Ireland. 

• 1st October 2018 Florea Lab welcomes its first member! Alexa Ennis (B.Sc. from University College Dublin) starts her PhD project on soft micro-robotics for health applications funded through the SFI-AMBER PhD programme.

• 1st October 2018 The beginning of Florea Lab @TCD.