Mohammed Deera, a first class BEng Materials and Design graduate from 2020, has won the 2021 James S Walker Award from IOM3 for his final year project on "A Potential Route to Re-processable Natural Rubber". The idea that he explored experimentally was the creation of labile crosslinks that could be easily broken and recreated to allow products that are more easily to recycle.

This national award and £450 prize, is presented by IOM3 to the best examined UK student project in the field of polymers. The project was supervised by James Busfield, who commented that Deera did a great project last year and fully deserves this recognition for all his hard work.

His project collaborated extensively with SEMS PhD student, Anureet Kaur. He did a great job both in the labs prior to COVID lockdown and then when processing his results. After graduation Deera has stayed at QMUL to undertake an Aerospace Engineering MSc. James also commented that this was the first time that a QMUL student has won this award since MSc student, Lewis Tunnicliffe won the award back in 2011.

Updated by: James Busfield