Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Research Fellow in High Throughput Nanomaterials Chemistry
- Dept of Chemistry
- Faculty of Maths & Physical Sciences
In 2011, Fuqiang started his scientific career at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China. In 2014 Fuqiang received his Master’s degree in Material Science and Engineering. He worked on the project of “Synthesis of organic–inorganic hybrid polyphosphazene materials and their application in drug release”.
In the same year he moved to the Utrecht University (UU), the Netherlands, to pursue his doctorate. He performed his research at the at the Van `t Hoff Laboratory for Physical and Colloid Chemistry group supervised by Prof. Dr. Willem Kegel. His Ph.D. research focused on the synthesis of uniform anisotropic colloids as model systems for self-assembly studies and led to the development of a variety of patch colloidal particles with orthogonal functionalities.
In 2018, 3 Months before defending his thesis, Patchy colloids with orthogonal functionality, he started his postdoc at the Organic Chemistry & Catalysis in the groups of Prof. Dr. Pieter Bruijnincx on “the application of Pickering emulsion in tandem catalysis”. He prepared a series of colloidal particles as both stabilizers for Pickering emulsion stabilization and catalysts for biphasic interfacial tandem reactions.
As of June 2021, he is working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Davis Functional Nanomaterials group at the University College London (UCL). He is investigating on the project of ‘’High Throughput Preparation of Tunable Magnetically Assembled 1D Nanostructures’’.


From 2014-2018, I performed my PhD in Van ‘t Hoff Laboratory for Physical & Colloid Chemistry at Utrecht
University. My dissertation titled ‘Patchy colloids with orthogonal functionality’ focused on the synthesis
of Janus particles with functional patches which can be modified orthogonally and independently. For
example, I developed an efficient and scalable approach for the synthesis of uniform Janus particles with
two chemically orthogonal patches carrying ATRP initiators and alkyne functionalities. Besides the Janus
spheres, by combining seeded dispersion polymerization with heterogeneous nucleation, I was able to
prepare bifunctional anisotropic particles, such as snowman, dumbbells, trimers etc. The resulting particles
featuring controllable geometry and orthogonal chemistry have potential applications in the fields of
tandem catalysis, directed self-assembly, or as multi-responsive self-propelling particles.
From 2018 November I worked as a postdoc in Organic Chemistry & Catalysis group at Utrecht University
on the project of application of Pickering emulsions (PE) for tandem catalysis reactions. To achieve PE with
higher stability, I developed uniform bi-functional Janus silica spheres, polyphosphazene nanofibers,
raspberry shaped nanoparticles as heterogeneous catalysts and efficient solid emulsifiers for oil-in-water
or oil-in-oil Pickering interfacial catalysis. I also investigated the controllable synthesis of bi-functional
hollow spheres as nanoreactors for tandem catalysis. The prepared PE were further applied in continuous
flow catalytic systems in microchannel reactor or glass columns. Here I increased my knowledge and skills
in the area of organic chemistry, especially continuous flow tandem catalysis. Since my PhD, I have
supervised 4 master students and 5 bachelor students.
In his work with the Davies group, Fuqiang will use his knowledge of colloid synthesis and surface modification to prepare both well defined 0D and 1D magnetic materials as efficient MRI contrast agents.
Previous supervision of 7 research projects for master student and bachelor student in Chemistry at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. And two of them got a grade of 9 (9.5 is best, 1 is worst) for their thesis.
Currently I am supervising two master students at UCL.