This Monday saw a meeting to discuss the development of the Materials Property Validation Centre. Feedback to the survey carried out by the National Physical Laboratory formed the basis for a discussion on how to implement the recommendations of the Materials IGT Report most effectively. 101 organisations had taken part in the survey – and 80% had expressed their interest in taking part in this workshop.    more »

Over the last few years, the term “Open Innovation” has been bandied about by a lot of people as the new way of doing things (I am sorry, but I really cannot bring myself to use the word paradigm!). In my final days at ICI we had a few attempts to test the more extravagant claims but I had lost touch with its progress. When I discovered that an old colleague was now the Business Development Director of one of the main players and was giving a presentation in London, I took the opportunity of catching up with him and the subject at the same time.   more »

Following the recommendation of our Honorary President, Lord Haskell, Materials UK has become a member of the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee .   more »

One of the side-effects of being a polymer scientist, is that I have always been able to claim allegiance to the chemistry or materials side according to my mood. On Thursday, I was wearing my chemistry hat and attending the SusChem European Technology Platform Stakeholder Event in Brussels.    more »

On Tuesday I took part in the 5th PowdermatriX annual meeting in Loughborough. Powdermatrix is a node of the Materials KTN and evolved from the Faraday of the same name.    more »

I attended the ‘Innovations for the Built Environment’ Conference and Exhibition at Earls Court last week. It was my first attendance to a re-vamped event that brought together five key themes relating to the built environment (“Ecobuild”, Futurebuild, Regenex, Cityscape and Building for Health) It was, what appeared to be the ‘motorshow’ of the construction industry with around 500 exhibitors.   more »

This Tuesday a few of us met to discuss the next steps the Education and Skills Working Group is taking. The Working Group is co-chaired by Bob John (of TWI) and David Pulling (of GKN) and we were joined by Lord Haskell.    more »