The 5th International Conference on Advanced Polymer Science and Engineering, known as Polymer Connect-2024, took place from October 23rd to 25th, 2024, in Athens, Greece.
Ollie and Beth presented their PhD work on sustainable and thermoresponsive polymers respectively.
Bethany joined the group in July 2024 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Sustainable Polymer Chemistry.
The meeting was held at Loughborough University and for the first time was organised as a 2-day event by the Macro Group UK, and locally Dr Helen Willcock and Dr Ryan Larder. With lots of help from our student ambassadors – including Ollie and Beth.
Beth and Ollie both gave poster presentations and Ollie won a prize for his – well done! And Fiona gave an invited talk at the meeting.
RAPS was held at the University of Birmingham, organised by Dr Maria Chiara Arno. Fiona gave a presentation on the Friday morning – first presentation after returning from maternity leave!
The group attended the Macro group UK’s Young Researchers Meeting YRM 2022 held at the University of Nottingham, 18-19th July. It was great to see the wide array of ongoing polymer research and meeting with other PhD students and early career researchers.
Everyone from the group gave presentations at the conference – well done to Ryan for winning a prize for his flash presentation and poster, to Sarah for giving her first conference talk, and to Ollie and Beth for presenting their posters. Caty from the Willcock group also won a prize for her talk. A very successful group outing and strong representation from Loughborough Materials!
Photo credits to the group and @YRM_2022 Twitter account
Fiona organised the Plastic waste and microplastics workshop in July, which was held at Loughborough University. The event featured invited speakers from academia and industry, a poster session for early career researchers, and ideas generation session to spark ideas and discussion, with a longer term aim of developing new collaborations. The event was a huge success with over 50 delegates attending and 8 poster presentations from PhD students, including Beth, Shadi and Imole from the Plastrax group. We had lots of discussion about current issues surrounding plastic waste in the environment and ways to address these issues.
Invited speakers:
Dr Samantha Garrard, Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Dr Andrew Mayes, University of East Anglia
Dr Tom Stanton, Loughborough University
Dr Matthew Derry, Aston University
Nathan Rawdon, Ashley Bell and Vikke Woodhouse, Polypipe Civils and Green Urbanisation
Dr Christopher Kay, Interface Polymers
In June 2022 Fiona, Ryan and Sarah attended the Bordeaux Polymer Conference 2022. Fiona gave a presentation and Ryan and Sarah both presented posters. With plenty of plenary, invited and contributed talks it was a fruitful conference and several poster sessions to fit in! The conference dinner was held in the most spectacular venue with so many interactive games to join in with before dinner. Looking forward to the next meeting!
Fiona and Ollie attended the 11th Workshop on Fats and Oils as Renewable Feedstock for the Chemical Industry in Dortmund, Germany in May 2022. Ollie gave his first poster presentation on his work with synthesising monomers from plant oils. It was an interesting meeting with excellent speakers, poster sessions and conference dinner – we’ll be back again for the next one!
Welcome to Beth who started her PhD in the group in October 2021!
Beth will be part of the PLASTRAX group, an interdisciplinary team, focussing on microplastics and nanoplastics.
In July 2021 Ollie and Ryan both joined the group.
Ollie has started a PhD focussed on polymerisation of monomers derived from renewable sources.
Ryan has joined us as a Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on the PPFTG project.
Welcome both!
Hatton Polymer Group 