Tom Bruining

"I envision that one day, we will have touch displays that are on par with our audio and visual display technology."

Tom Bruining is a doctoral candidate in the Stimuli-responsive Functional Materials & Devices (SFD) group under Dick Broer and Danqing Liu. He is working on creating liquid crystal based stimuli responsive surfaces that can change their texture to provide haptic feedback. These surfaces have applications in virtual reality and augmented reality systems to provide an improved sense of touch.

Tom completed his master's degree in Molecular Systems and Materials Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in 2022. He completed his thesis on Liquid Crystal Elastomer Fiber Actuation by Motor Molecules in the SFD group. After this he went on to do his internship at Merck in Darmstadt, Germany, where he worked with ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals.