EPS Postgraduate Day: Year 2 Talks

Expanding on our current successful annual Poster Event, we will now be asking the winners of each Research Institute's 2nd year prize to give a talk to a wide audience of staff and students. The talks will take place on the morning of the Poster Event, which will take place in the afternoon. The audience will then select their favourite talk, and the winner will be awarded a prize during the prize-giving at the end of the Poster Event.

We hope that this event will give staff and students within the School an insight into the research being undertaken, as well as their own, and that they will relish in the opportunity to network with colleagues from other institutes who they perhaps wouldn't normally come across.

Please RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/eps-pgr-day-yr-2-talks-tickets-60572658452

Details of the talks can be found below:

IB3 – Alfredo Ongaro

"SUSTAINABILITY MATTERS: POLYLACTIC ACID, A NATURAL ORIGIN POLYESTER FOR THE RAPID PROTOTYPING OF MICROFLUIDIC DEVICES. FROM LAB TO ORGAN-ON-CHIP APPLICATIONS."

Poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) or Polycarbonate (PC)? Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)? Or maybe Polylactic acid (PLA). What should I take into account while designing the next generation microfluidic devices for point-of-care diagnostics and clinical applications? Performance in use? Cost? Every day we are overwhelmed of information to be aware of plastic pollution and climate change issue. Every choice we make can strongly impact on our surrounding environment. It does really matter if we save even only a few pounds of fuel by choosing a biorenewable material such as PLA instead of PMMA or PDMS. A “Clash of Material” is approaching, then. I will present the assessment of PLA as next generation material for microfluidic devices from lab to organ-on-chip applications. PLA will challenge its petrochemical derived counterparts. Surface properties, Optical properties, biocompatibility, absorption/adsorption of small molecules, manufacturability and environmental sustainability will assess the winner.

ICS – Euan McLean

“Promoting and Controlling Organic Reactions Using Transition-Metal Catalysis.”

The use of the transition metal catalysts has become ubiquitous in organic chemistry over the last 50 years. With a number of products that rely on transition metal catalysed processes, including pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, becoming vital to our modern way of life. This importance has driven researchers in this area to develop new reactions and catalysts which can achieve chemical transformations in the most mild and economical ways possible. With recent advances even the energy from light can now be used to promote catalytic activity.

IMPEE – Chiara Pischetola

“Novel Coupled Dehydrogenation-Hydrogenation as an Alternative Technology for Sustainable Chemical Production”

Sustainability is a critical problem facing the chemical sector, where the development of continuous processes based on renewable feedstocks is key to the application of "green chemistry". Hydrogenation, a core catalytic process in the fine chemical industry (30-40%) is typically operated in batch mode using excess of pressurised (5-100 bar) non-renewable H2 (12 kg CO2 generated per kg H2). We have developed a technology that can replace the traditional hydrogenation route by an efficient continuous-flow alternative operated at ambient pressure. The process involves a one-pot coupled dehydrogenation with hydrogenation directed at the transformation of renewable bio-sourced materials to high value ketones, alcohols and alkenes over new heterogeneous Cu/Au nano-catalysts. Hydrogen generated in situ via (non-oxidative) dehydrogenation of alcohol is utilised in the transformation of phenylacetylene and a range of m-furaldehydes. Catalyst optimisation has involved a systematic evaluation of the nature of the active sites in the hydrogenation/dehydrogenation steps and the role of the support in determining hydrogen generation and transfer. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of innovative coupling catalytic dehydrogenation (as a source of reactive hydrogen) with hydrogenation. We prove orders of magnitude enhanced H2 utilisation, elevated selective hydrogenation rate and the simultaneous production of a range of valuable products. Our system circumvents the use of compressed H2 with critical safety and long term supply implications for large scale production.

IPaQS – Teodora Grigorova

“From canal to laboratory: how solitons can be used to make new light sources”

First observed on the Union canal in Edinburgh, solitons are found in many forms in nature, here we show how soliton effects can be used to create new light sources with unique optical properties. Recently, nonlinear interactions of ultrashort pump pulses in gas-filled photonic-crystal fibres demonstrated pulse self-compression and efficient, tunable energy conversion of the pump as far as the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV). We offer a favourable approach using unstructured large-core capillary fibres, achieving optical attosecond pulses, larger spectral tunability and the possibility of energy scaling by orders of magnitude, thereby outperforming free-electron lasers in the VUV.

ISSS – Spyridon Daskalakis

“Could Backscatter technology be a solution for ultra low cost agricultural wireless sensors?”

Sensors that are used in agriculture are hampered by extremely high costs and excessive battery power consumption – but backscatter sensors could help address these issues. In order to monitor a network of 100 plants, the operating cost will typically rack up hundreds of pounds per field, and will gobble around 50 mWs per plant. In our research, we try to address these shortfalls by opting for each plant to have an antenna and one transistor that acts as a switch, instead of an active power-hungry radio. The sensor uses wireless communication based on a reflections technology known as backscatter. The antenna acts as a mirror and when it is illuminated with a signal, it reflects back the wave. The plant can modulate information by a very smart switching of this antenna. The illuminating signal is a free ambient signal coming from the FM music stations avoiding the use of a dedicated illuminator. Info: www.daskalakispiros.com