The 2016 Luckhurst-Samulski Prize has been awarded to the best paper published in the Liquid Crystals Journal to Alya Dawood from Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, University of Zakho, Robert Richardson (University of Bristol), and Martin Grossel, Geoffrey Luckhurst, Bakir Timimi, Neil Wells and Yousif Yousif from University of Southampton for their paper entitled 'On the twist-bend nematic phase formed directly from the isotropic phase'. This paper was chosen by the Prize Selection Committee from amongst 230 published papers. The Selection Committee, consisting of the Editor Professor Corrie Imrie, the Editorial Board, as well as Geoffrey Luckhurst and Ed Samulski as the two Founding Editors. However, since Professor Luckhurst was one of the authors he did not participate in this selection process. The presentation, by Professor Imrie, of the 2016 Luckhurst-Samulski Prize was arranged by the publishers Taylor & Francis at a special lunch in Oxford at the Old Parsonage Hotel on Wednesday 20th September 2017.

The Selection Committee viewed this paper as being highly significant to our developing understanding of the twist-bend nematic phase which is considered as one of the important topics in liquid crystal science in recent years. This paper describes how the authors designed, synthesized and characterized a mesogen exhibiting the twist-bend nematic phase formed directly from the isotropic phase and not, as is usual, from the conventional nematic phase.