Polymer IRC Spring Meeting

Professor Phil Coates has taken over as Executive Director of the Polymer IRC, and further development of the website has begun. Various meetings will be organised, and the IRC Spring Meeting, aimed at the IRC's industry colleagues and members of the IRC sites was hosted at Bradford in April.

This year's meeting included overviews from each of the site Directors, industry contributions, and specialist technical presentations by the IRC's academics. There was also the opportunity to view the extensive, world-class Polymer IRC Polymer Engineering Laboratories at Bradford, including unique facilities for polymer micromoulding and other micro and nanotechnology activities, solid phase orientation, and pharmaceutical processing.

To become a member of, or for further information about the Polymer IRC:

E-mail: Polymer IRC

Tel.: 01274 233374

Bradford Industry Group Inaugural Meeting

The Polymer IRC laboratories at Bradford held its Inaugural Meeting of the new Bradford Industry Group (BIG) on Wednesday 29 February.

The Inaugural Meeting included a presentation from Dr Ben Whiteside, Centre Director of Polymer MNT, on the latest micromoulding research developments of the Centre. His talk covered current key challenges, advances, and applications in the micromoulding of parts for optical uses, microneedles for drug delivery, thermal contact resistance, advanced mould heating through laser assisted processing, and ICT enabled intelligent data processing and management systems.

The slides of all the presentations are available by clicking here:

Inaugural Meeting Slides

The aim of the BIG is:

1. To encourage development of the polymer industry by:

• bringing interested companies and organisations together,
• sharing Bradford's polymer related IRC science and technology progress, and
• providing a forum for discussion on strategic/business matters.

2. To expand the industrial involvement of the world-class Bradford laboratory and the wider Polymer IRC, developing leading edge, high academic quality programmes of relevance to industry.

Following discussion at this very successful and productive first meeting, future meetings will typically consist of:

• technical presentations from Bradford, the wider Polymer IRC, and industry,
• the discussion of strategic and operational matters, and industry and funding news, and
• time for networking.

It was also decided that up to three such meetings should take place per annum.

Future meetings of the BIG will be announced on the Events page.

Attendees at the Inaugural BIG Meeting in the Polymer MNT laboratory of the University of Bradford.

PPE '11

The University of Bradford hosted Polymer Process Engineering (PPE) '11 on the 6 and 7 December. The biennial PPE conference aims to provide a timely forum for the presentation and discussion of key developments in polymer engineering. This year, the themes were Polymer Micro and Nano Technology, Healthcare Technology, Resource Efficiency, and Science to Commercialisation. Chaired by Professor Phil Coates, the forum attracted an excellent range of industrial and academic international speakers and participants.