Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar participated at the 9th International Colloids Conference in Sitges, Spain

This week, the 9th International Colloids Conference was held in Sitges near Barcelona, Spain. The conference focused on advanced functional biopolymers and their soft nanosystems. Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar attended this conference, financially supported by the “Gleichstellungsfond” of the Faculty of Biology. She presented a poster on “Design and Characterization of Tioconazole-Loaded Chitosan Nanocapsules for the Treatment of Vaginal Candidiasis”, describing work she had performed together with our postdoctoral guest, Dr. Natalia Calvo from the University of Rosario in Argentina who had visited us last year. Together, they had loaded antifungal drugs into chitosan-coated nano-capsules, thus increasing the solubility and bioavailability of these hydrophobic drugs that are commonly used to fight vaginal infections by the yeast Candida albicans. The conference was very fascinating covering a wide range of topics from science and engineering, nano-science and soft matter science to catalysis. The highlight of the conference for Sruthi was the amount of basic research in the area of polymer science that helped broaden her knowledge and understanding in the field. The poster was fairly visited with some interesting discussion during the poster session, which covered over 250 posters in one session.