William Kyei-Manu has become the latest member of James Busfield's Soft Matter Group to pass his PhD exam. William completed his PhD viva on the 6th December 2023 defending a thesis entitled, "Carbon Black Reinforcement of Tyre Tread Compounds."

His external examiner, Prof Ian Kinloch from Manchester University commented that William was one of the best prepared candidates that he had ever had the pleasure to examine.

William’s project was an industrially funded PhD project sponsored by Birla Carbon. They have reported that a range of different tyre companies have already exploited the findings from the investigation in the development of new rubber compounds with an improved cut and chip resistance for tyres amongst other beneficial properties.

James notes that "William has been a model research student writing three high quality journal papers that are already published, but he was also awarded a best student oral presentation prize at the International Rubber Conference 2023 in China last month."

William is currently working as a PDRA in James’ group funded by his PhD sponsor as he looks to write further journal papers based upon work taken from his PhD thesis.

Updated by: James Busfield