Siliviya Halacheva: Silviya’s research interests are in the area of polymer synthesis and characterization, and in the study of nanoscale structure formation in self-assembling systems ranging from surfactant micellar structures to block and graft non-ionic and ionic copolymers. Her PhD thesis, from the Institute of Polymers at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, covered the synthesis, characterization and aqueous solution properties of poly(glycidol)-based analogues of commercially available Pluronic block copolymers. She recently joined the University of Oxford after being a PDRA at the University of Bath since 2007. During her PhD studies and postdoctoral training she has become familiar with a variety of physicochemical characterisation techniques such as GPC, 1H and 13C NMR, MALDI TOF, rheology, neutron reflectometry, static and dynamic light scattering, small angle neutron and X-ray scattering, as well as Cryo-TEM.