SCI Formulation Forum 4th Annual Event: Challenges and opportunities in formulating a sustainable future

Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff CBE FRS FREng studied at King's College, Cambridge, B.A (1969) and Ph.D. (1973) under the supervision of J. J. Turner FRS on the Matrix Isolation of Large Molecules. In 1972, he was appointed Research/Senior Research Officer in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1979, he moved to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. Promotion to Reader in Inorganic Chemistry and then to Professor of Chemistry followed in 1985 and 1991 respectively. In addition, he is Honorary Professor of Chemistry at Moscow State University. From 1994-99, he held an EPSRC/Royal Academy of Engineering Clean Technology Fellowship at Nottingham. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (2002), of the RSC (2002) and of the IChemE (2004).

I am part of the Molecules to Product programme Centre of Doctoral Training (CDT) funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). My PhD focuses on understanding and evaluating the biodegradation fate of engineered polymeric microparticles that enters through various channels into the natural environment.

Dan Noakes currently works as a Chemical & Process Engineer leading sustainability, circular economy and systems change for the UK and global supply chains at CPI. He has over 16 years of wisdom in sustainability and circular economy with roles in Environmental Consultancy, Chemical & Process Engineering and Technical and Commercial Management. He is also involved with several Steering groups and Management Boards including; High Value Manufacturing Catapult’s Net Zero Working Group and Circular Economy Strategy Team, Management Board for iCAST programme, Bath and Oxford University, Materials and Engineering and Business Engagement Advisory Board, Newcastle University, Maths, Stats & Physics.

Dr Daniele Castagnolo obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Siena (Italy) in 2006 working with Professor Maurizio Botta on the synthesis of antimycobacterial agents and on the development of microwave assisted metathesis reactions. During his doctoral studies he also worked on the total synthesis of the Branimycin side chain. After completing his Ph.D., Daniele was appointed as postdoctoral research associate at the Helsinki University of Technology (Finland) in the group of Professor Petri Pihko, where he worked on the development of Brønsted acid catalytic reactions for the synthesis of non-anomeric [6.5]-spiroketals. In 2008 Daniele moved back to the Universiy of Siena as Research Fellow, working on metal-catalysed alkyne reactions for the synthesis of drug-like compounds and on the identification of novel antifungal and antiviral agents. Finally, he completed his postodoctoral studies at the University of Manchester (UK) working in the research group of Professor Jonathan Clayden on the synthesis of tertiary thiols. In 2012, Daniele started his independent research at Northumbria University and later, in September 2015, he moved to King's College London.
Since January 2022, Daniele is Associate Professor in Chemical Sustainability at the Department of Chemistry at UCL.

Darren Budd has worked for BASF since April 1996. Darren has worked across many of BASF’s business areas and spent 5 years in Germany working for the Corporate Venture capital Unit. Darren’s current focus is on the development of BASF UK & Ireland’s strategies to deliver the company’s growth ambitions. His responsibilities include leadership of Sales & Marketing units in UK & Ireland and the development of Innovation and Sustainability across BASF’s Business Units and external collaborations with customers and Academic Institutions.
Previously, Darren was Managing Director of BASF’s In-house Distribution business (BTC) for UK & Ireland, and Business Director for the Care Chemicals business for Northern Europe. Darren is currently Vice-President of the Chemical Business association and sits on the board of the British Coatings Federation and several other Trade Associations

Ted graduated from the University of Nottingham School of Pharmacy and is in his final year of PhD at Queen's University Belfast. His work focusses upon the formulation of medicines using emerging technologies (mainly 3D Printing, Microfluidics and Electrospinning). A key aspect within the field of emerging technologies is the promotion of their sustainable usage and how their optimisation could lead to both environmental and economical betterment. His work within this area has also steered him to becoming a sustainability lead within the school of pharmacy at Queen's.

Dr Geoff Brighty leads on sustainability (science, policy and regulation) for Mura Technology, which is developing a number of chemical recycling plants in the UK, US and EU. He is a published research scientist and has had a career spanning over 35 years in the environmental protection and regulation sector with the Environment Agency on waste strategy, environmental toxicology and chemical standards, as well as operational regulation of major process industry, waste management and wider environmental regulation.
From 2014 to 2020, he was Technical Director at the UKs first plastic pollution charity, Plastic Oceans, and was special advisor to its film A Plastic Ocean. Geoff is a member of the UK Plastics Pact Advisory Group and chairs the Pact’s Non-Mechanical Recycling Collaborative Action Group. He is also chair of environmental NGO, Norfolk Rivers Trust.

Prof João Cabral is a physicist with a PhD in polymer science and engineering. He was a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial, becoming full professor in 2018. He held visiting professorships at Fudan University, University of Chicago, and Instituto Superior Técnico. He currently holds a P&G/Royal Academy of Engineering research chair, and is an associate director of the Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering, and leads a research group of soft matter engineering, extensively employing microfluidics and scattering techniques to design formulations and methods, from the molecular to the macroscales.

Kathryn gathers more than 15 years of progressive experience in innovation, in the crop protection, and more recently the personal care and homecare industries. She joined Croda in 2010, dedicated to developing their crop protection research programme towards speciality ingredients for adjuvancy and formulation. Kathryn is now leading R&D teams focussing on delivering new product development, product validation and claim substantiation, and formulation research including external partnering, aimed at the global beauty care and homecare markets. Kathryn earned her Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from St. Andrews University in Scotland and continued her research at Durham University, also in the UK. Her primary research interests were around delineating biological mechanisms, with several research papers and journal articles published in this area.

Linda Pravinata recently joined Quorn Foods in 2021 as Lead Innovation Scientist with research interests in texture development of meat analogue derived from filamentous fungal biomass. Prior to Quorn, Linda had an international career track spanned from industry to academia as a Scientist at PepsiCo R&D in Texas and teaching roles at universities in Indonesia and UK. During her teaching tenure at University of Leeds School of Food Science and Nutrition, Linda also held an international fellowship (2018-2021) from the Royal Academy of Engineering for Newton Fund project in collaboration with rice farmers in Thailand and academics in Mahasarakham University. She was also a Michael Beverley Innovation Fellow awarded in 2020 for innovation in the development of value-added materials derived from fermented products.

Dr. Malcolm Driffield has over 25 years’ experience in the field of analytical chemistry, providing advice and guidance on the analytical techniques used to investigate problems across a number of commodities and Industries including food, beverages, fuel, packaging and food contact materials. During his 16 years at a UK Government lab, he gained widespread experience in analytical methodologies used for the determination of chemical contaminants in foods and food contact materials, including an extensive knowledge of non-targeted analysis techniques used for the determination of non-intentionally added substances (NIAS).

Professor Mark Simmons, PhD. (Nottingham University, 1998), CEng, FIChemE, joined the University of Birmingham as a lecturer in 2000, being promoted to Professor of Fluid Mechanics in 2012. He served as the Head of the School of Chemical Engineering between April 2014 – July 2021.

Mark is now Director of the School’s long-standing EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Formulation Engineering. He has advanced research into interfacial phenomena in the presence of surfactants and in multiphase mixing. This work has underpinned over twenty years of research collaborations with industry on the processing of complex formulated liquid products whose microstructural properties are key to their performance. He has pioneered the use of particle image velocimetry and applied novel tomographic methods to interrogate non-Newtonian and viscoelastic flows.

Mary Okeudo-Cogan is a PhD student and part of the CDT Molecule to Product at the University of Leeds. Her cross disciplinary research is focused on multi-length scale characterisation of fungal based meat analogues utilising techniques such as atomic force microscopy, cryo scanning electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, and rheology. Her research aims to elucidate the interactions between fungal fibres and proteins in composite gels and how underlying interactions impact on texture and product structure. Her research interests lie within sustainable alternative proteins and fungal based systems and the wider areas of soft matter and material science. Prior to her PhD program, Mary worked as a food quality and safety professional employed by Coca-Cola Euro-pacific Partners.

Professor Goswami is the Head of Department of Music and Design Arts at the University of Huddersfield. The portfolio includes three subject areas- Fashion and Textiles, Visual Arts, and Music and Music Technology. Music, for example, is ranked 25th in QS world ranking and 1st for NSS. He is also the Director of Technical Textiles Research Centre. In his own research, since joining the University of Huddersfield, Professor Goswami has proactively developed the research profile and activities in Technical Textiles. He is committed to multidisciplinary research and is working towards building constructive collaborations with the University of Huddersfield and industries to transform the competitiveness of the European technical textiles industries. Since joining Huddersfield, Professor Goswami has won government and commercial funding for several research projects, including a collaborative £5.4M project (AHRC Creative Economy- Industry Challenge) with the University of Leeds and Royal College of Art. Professor Goswami’s domains of research are product development using flexible materials and application of chemistry for functionalising textiles.

Richard Blackburn is the Professor of Sustainable Materials at The University of Leeds. His key areas of research focus around the principles of sustainability and how these principles can be applied in the fields of materials science, coloration technology and cosmetics. His research is important in terms of the contribution to basic research, fundamental discoveries, and influence on the direction of the field, making a significant contribution to the scientific community. His research also has significant impact in its application in terms of providing more sustainable products and processes for industry and society. Professor Blackburn is a co-founder and director of spin-out company Keracol Limited and its cosmetics brand Dr. Craft.

In 2013 Professor Blackburn was made a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Dyers of The City of London, and was given The Freedom of The City of London. In 2016 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists for Prolonged contributions to education and academic research and in 2017 the Fellowship of the Society. In both 2018 and 2019 he was awarded The Society of Dyers and Colourists Centenary Medal for best paper in the journal Coloration Technology, becoming the first author in history to win the award in two consecutive years.

Roy is immediate past-President of the Royal Society of Chemistry Industry Council, and Fellow. He chairs the RSC In-dustry Task Force for Polymers in Liquid Formulations (PLFs).
Roy spent 31 years with the Procter & Gamble Company holding global R&D positions in Europe and Asia. One of his patented inventions is a $150 million business in the US.
He has chaired the North East Innovation Board and currently chairs Northern Accelerator, the research commerciali-sation programme across six North East Universities.
Roy was first Director of the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing. He currently chairs a national inquiry into the use of Technology for Housing for our Ageing Population.
In 2017, Roy was honoured with an OBE for services to science, innovation & skills.