University of Groningen
The Colouration of Bird Feathers explained by Effective-Medium Multilayer Modelling
Freyer, Pascal
DOI:
10.33612/diss.150815549
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Publication date: 2021
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Citation for published version (APA):
Freyer, P. (2021). The Colouration of Bird Feathers explained by Effective-Medium Multilayer Modelling. University of Groningen. https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.150815549
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my (co)promotores for supporting me during the wonderful four years of this PhD. Not only for stimulating my competences in performing and communicating my work most effectively, but also your focus on my professional development as a scientist. I will reap the fruits of everything I have learnt from you for a long time to come. Doekele Stavenga, your utmost conviction that the results from my measurements and modelling would be useful for publications were and will remain an eye opener for me. It is an honour to have spent these four intensive years working with you; but it is your positive working attitude and wonderful humour that are the especially memorable part of the many meetings and lab work together. Petra Rudolf, your passion to support scientists in their academic career is unrivalled. Thank you for having only the best intentions, you have inspired me to go that extra mile. Casper van der Kooi, I feel very privileged to have shared uncountable insightful moments together, related to science but also beyond. Your advice was always very valuable especially since you had just achieved your PhD (twice in a row!). I wish you only the best for your scientific endeavours!
Then I would like to thank my assessment committee Silvia Vignolini, Hendrik Hölscher, George Palasantzas for reading and evaluating this thesis, and Bodo Wilts, Maria Loi and Richard Hildner, that you have agreed be part of the jury. It is an honour for me to have such established scientists at my defence with whom I also carry fond memories from several conferences during my PhD trajectory (Living Light, Cambridge / Metamaterials Workshop, Dresden / Faraday Discussions, Online / Physics@Veldhoven, Veldhoven / Zernike Institute Meeting, Vlieland), or your excellent lectures I followed somewhere along the line of (under)graduate student at the RuG, or simply by being a significant part of the Zernike Institute life that is so engrained in my heart by now.
I am very grateful to Wanda Reen for the magnificent design of the thesis cover and providing me with the template for the internal thesis text.
excellent technical support throughout my PhD. Your expertise about all things optics and all things photography and colour were an unmissable component for making my experiments a success. Dear Bodo, your insights were always an inspiration for me whenever we collaborated or talked about our fascinations; thank you for the great work and the great times, whether it is a final check of the manuscript or the place to meet after the conference day, I could always count on you! Thank you Bram for the pleasant sessions working with Matlab, where I could learn a lot from you about the possibilities that Matlab has. Primoz Pirih, my third paranymph, thank you for your most sociable presence and impressive knowledge on any topic that could ever cross a human mind. Marco, an inspiration for me in the sense that I may still pick up on doing research on the untouched nature of my country just on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Mauricio, I will visit you soon! John, keep up the good work, also on the whiskey and the women. Hope to visit you too some day! I am sure that if it was not for our physical separation or my restlessness to spend at least the evenings beside my daughters’ beds, the research world as well as the bars of Groningen would undoubtedly have heard more of our collective efforts; but I emphasize that it is never too late! Thank you also to all the other talented MSc and BSc students who coloured the lab with varying personality for short periods from Costa Rica, Columbia, the Netherlands and several other countries.
A great appreciation goes out towards all past and current members of the Surfaces and Thin Films group, who have adopted me lovingly in their midst: Meike Stöhr, thank you for your continued support and interest in my research. I wish you continued success in all your scientific endeavours. I thank Hilda Riemens and before that Yvonne Nagelhout for her meticulous management of the group admin. I will always remember the nice group outings that you organised with such a love and dedication. Michaela, and Nico, thank you so much for your very well placed constructive remarks on my written and presented scientific work (already during my MSc research in your group), but also related to my career. I could not wish more constructive input from colleagues, I hope you will always continue to inspire others like this. Also thank you to the former and current Postdocs and PhD students Naureen, Martina, Florian, Georgia, Régis, Peter, Sumit, Jiquan, Bay, Anh, Jun Li, Jos, and Lam, Ali, Oreste, Dominik, Adam, Wenbo, Baoxin, Feng, Koen, Lena, Giovanna, Brian, Hamoon, Theodosis, Joris, Qiankun, (and many more talented MSc and BSc students) who I shared several years with and especially the social part of my PhD with; thank you for shaping me positively as a scientist, but also the many fun
moments and conversations/presentations, not only around the lunch table. I wish you all the best in your academic and non-academic careers.
Dear Zernike Institute colleagues with whom I time and time again struck up many a personal and often open and spontaneous conversation, I am happy and must reciprocate what I have heard repeatedly from colleagues: that the collegial atmosphere is truly inspiring and facilitates research-excellence in the best of ways. Thank you for this and I hope our paths will cross again, no I am certain they will! Thank you also to Antoon Willemsen form UMCG, who I had the pleasure to teach two Matlab programming courses with.
One of the most important contributions for making my PhD possible were of course by the people that took care of my two little lions at home. I am deeply indebted to Valerio and Helma for filling the gap by dedicated taxying of the children from school – of course also on the good, but significantly also the bad and worse days – day in and day out, for month after month, and the taking care of them until Larissa and I came home in the afternoon. Thank you Mama and Valeria, for flying in at times where no other solution existed, you brought new energy into the household when we were drained of all our energy.
Last but not least, the light that keeps me burning deep within (especially throughout the darker European winter months) are of course my extended family and my friends and also the nature that we humans are inevitably a part of (but still think it wise to pollute and destroy). Thank you to all my loving family and friends (in Namibia, but also in South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands and throughout the world) who have contributed to this energy inside of me, which helped me to master all the challenges on the way of achieving this PhD. And thank you Namibia with all your natural and cultural riches, for teaching me also the broader perspective of life while I am vigorously working on the fascinating tiny details that nature provides us with in abundance. The passionate search of Namibian feathers has been greatly aided by Dirk, Arne, Henner und Malte.
Thank you Claudia and Justus, for supporting us wherever you can.
Thank you my love, for having exactly the right dose of patience for me. Even though we have very different opinions on many things, this work would not have been possible without us looking in the same direction.
