Prof Anwesha Sarkar from the University of Leeds is the 2024 recipient of the McBain Medal. Anwesha’s research programme focuses on fabrication of biopolymeric microgels and her research has brought significant advancements towards fundamental understanding of their bulk and interfacial behaviour to answer biophysical questions. Besides fabricating innovative microgels using alternative proteins with tailored performance on lubrication, she devises biomimetic soft surfaces with optimized roughness and wetting properties. This has enabled her team to discover the true behaviour of these microgels at biological interfaces such as orally relevant surfaces across scales. Her recent contribution on design and multiscale tribological characterization of plant-based sustainable microgels has enabled a completely new technologically viable platform for next-generation sustainable formulation design with future applications in food, medical devices and allied soft matter formulations.

The McBain Medal is presented annually to an early career researcher (within 15 years of the award of a PhD) for outstanding achievement in colloid and interface science. This full day meeting will honour Prof Anwesha Sarkar and at the same time the Medal will be presented.  

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon says: “Many congratulations to Prof. Anwesha Sarkar. I am honoured to have been invited to this meeting as a guest speaker. It is going to be a fantastic day.“

This event will be of interest to researchers working on colloid and polymer chemistry, fine chemicals, formulated products, tribology, materials science, bio-interfaces and food.

Every year, Warwick ChemSoc, the Chemistry students’ society at Warwick University, organises a fantastic science event for sixth-form students in the region. The Annual Conference On Research in Natural Sciences (ACORNS) aims to encourage young people between 16 and 18 years old to explore the sciences. The one-day event is set up to help students decide whether further study in science would be the path for them by providing the opportunity to experience a series of mini-lectures presented by academics from Warwick University. On the day, there are also opportunities to engage and hear from current Warwick Science students and get a snapshot of what life is like at university.

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon says: “Warwick ChemSoc is a fantastic group of people who organise a range of events each year to bring together not only Chemistry students and staff but also Warwick people from other disciplines and people from outside the University. They have a pivotal role in the Department of Chemistry and provide a fantastic environment for learning, career progress, socializing, and well-being. I have always been a strong supporter of Warwick ChemSoc, and I am very happy to contribute again to this years’ exciting ACORNS program.”

Join us for a day of family-friendly fun and community celebration at Planting Roots! A day filled with hope, excitement, and a shared commitment to a sustainable future. Unleash your creativity in a junk sculpture workshop, explore interactive stalls from the University of Warwick’s engaging researchers, share your voice in a family discussion, learn about Foleshill Community Centre’s Planting Roots Medicinal Garden project, and experience the captivating performance of "Plastic Drastic Fantastic" by Akademi, combining South Asian dance with thought-provoking narratives on plastic. An event to spark curiosity, ignite creativity, and empower the younger generation as guardians of the environment.

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon will represent the Warwick Cross Faculty Plastics Group and discuss with you the good, the bad, and the future of plastics as part of the performance plastic drastic fantastic.

More information on the link below.

Warwick University is one of the UK’s research and innovation strongholds in polymer and colloid science, engineering, and manufacturing. We have established the Warwick Cross Faculty Plastics Group to position ourselves at the international forefront with the aims to make plastics environmentally sustainable, help to deliver on the UN sustainable development goals, and deliver on green innovation within the planetary boundaries.

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon will shortly highlight the activities and illustrate some recent science from the BonLab.

We actively invite industrial players, government organizations, and charities to be involved in this initiative, and hope you will participate in our activities. We invite all to join the Polymer Club, our free consortium which has the goal to promote interactions with and advice on the research directions of the Warwick Cross Faculty Plastics Group.

We are happy to participate in this meeting held by the RSC Formulation Science and Technology Group (FSTG) looking at Personal Care. The meeting will focus on how to produce more sustainable formulations. It will cover new trends in personal care, packaging, formulating greener, product life cycles and market drivers.

In the talk scheduled at 10:30 prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon will shortly introduce some of BonLab’s innovations towards greener formulations in personal care. The main focus of the talk will be on our recent work in which we demonstrate the fabrication of surface textured microcapsules formed from emulsion droplets which are stabilized by an interlocking mesh of needle-like crystals. Crystals of the small organic compounds are formed within the geometric confinement of the droplets. Microcapsule diameter can be easily tuned using microfluidics. This approach also proves to be scalable when using conventional mixers, yielding spikey microcapsules with diameters in the range of 10-50 µm. The capsule shape can be molded and arrested by jamming using recrystallization in geometric confinement. We will show that these textured microcapsules show a promising enhanced deposition onto a range of fabric fibers.

Come and find out about all that Warwick has to offer in terms of facilities, capabilities, opportunities for industrial collaboration, demands for student placements, KTP’s, grant-funded innovative research and Warwick Manufacturing Group.

The three speakers will be:

Stefan Bon - Warwick Polymers and Colloids

Presentation on Warwick Polymers and Colloids: The research activities at Warwick University related to coatings, inks and adhesives span across the faculty of science, engineering, and medicine and is supported by Warwick’s research technology platforms (RTPs) and global research priorities (GRPs). Stefan will give a short overview of key players in the polymer and colloid area, explain how industry can get involved, and will highlight some recent success stories from his own team, BonLab.

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan A. F. Bon is a professor at Warwick University and co-lead of Warwick’s Global Research Priority Innovative Manufacturing & Future Materials. His research team, BonLab combines polymer and colloid chemistry with soft matter physics and adds a chemical engineering twist to innovate in science. He has a strong track record in collaborative research with industry.

Daniel Lester - Research Technology Platform

Daniel Lester will talk about what Research Technology Platform is all about, some analytical capabilities within and ways of accessing University of Warwick facilities.

Dan attended Sussex University and obtained an MChem follow by a PhD in physical inorganic Chemistry. After leaving Sussex he joined Warwick University in 2013 as a Research Technician focussing on polymer characterisation. This followed by setting up a Polymer Characterisation facility in 2017 and joining the Research Technology Platform department, of which Dan is the manager. As part of this facility Dan manages ~30 instruments, specialising in GPC, thermal analysis and particle sizing. The facility supports the research of internal users but also offers its services externally, and has applied its knowledge to everything from coatings to personal care.”

Russ Noble - SME team at WMG

Russ Noble will present the work the SME team at WMG does in supporting UK manufacturing SMEs with their innovation challenges. Russ will give a brief overview of WMG’s key manufacturing capabilities and technical offers for businesses, explain how the team works with businesses from initial feasibility studies through to knowledge transfer with dedicated experts resident in the business, and include some case studies from projects with manufacturing SMEs.

Russ Noble is a Business Development Manager in the SME team at WMG. His role is to identify, engage and support UK manufacturing businesses with a range of business and technical offerings from the across WMG group. These offerings include Materials & Manufacturing, Digital & Sustainable Manufacturing, Transport Electrification and Intelligent Vehicles.

More info and registration on the OCCA Website.

The Macrogroup UK organizes each year a meeting for young researchers. This year’s meeting is hosted by Nottingham University and takes place online. Josh Booth, a 3rd year PhD student from the BonLab, will talk about his latest work on particle size distributions in catalytic chain transfer emulsion polymerization: chain-extension and the use of CCTP derived macromonomers as reactive surfactants in emulsion polymerization.

You can dial in to see his talk directly here on MS Teams.

You can see the full YRM 2020 program here.

His work will shortly be published in a special International Polymer Colloids Group edition of the ACS journal Biomacromolecules.

The Macrogroup UK organizes each year a meeting for young researchers. This year’s meeting is hosted by Nottingham University and takes place online. Matt Donald, a 4th year PhD student from the BonLab, will talk about his latest work in developing a new method to study chain transfer constants in radical polymerizations.

You can dial in to see his talk directly here on MS Teams.

You can see the full YRM 2020 program here.

His work was very recently published in Polymer Chemistry. You can find out more here.

We are delighted to contribute to the 2019 Pint of Science events in Coventry, especially as our part will take place in the Yard, a fantastic LGBTQ+ venue!

Stefan Bon and his team are specialists in the area of polymer colloids. Say what? Yes, microscopic polymer particles.

Plastics were hailed as the miracle material of the 20st century. Polymer dispersions, microscopic particles suspended in a liquid (often water), continue to play their part in the fabrication of a large range of products. Whereas paints, coatings, inks and adhesives seem obvious, you may not know they are key ingredients for products such as paper, condoms and gloves, concrete and asphalt . In this talk, Stefan and his team will talk you through the production and several applications of polymer colloids. What good do they do? What about the current public backlash on plastics?  Can polymer colloids play a role in a sustainable future for society and our planet?

An exciting event awaits!

We will be at the Sir Eric Rideal Lecture to honour the outstanding work of prof. Peter Lovell in the field of polymer colloids and emulsion polymerization.

The Sir Eric Rideal Lecture is a late-career or “life-time achievement award”, which recognises and honours an individual who has made a sustained and distinguished contribution to colloid and interface science in the UK. The recipient will receive the Award as the culmination of a one-day scientific meeting organised around them.

The Lecture is named after Sir Eric Rideal, who was one of the founders of catalysis and gave his name to the Eley Rideal mechanism. He was also famous for his work at the Colloid Science Laboratory which he set up in Cambridge University in the 1930s