Dr Kirsty Rutherford passed her PhD viva on the 29th August 2025 defending a thesis entitled, “Modelling the Viscoelastic Behaviour of Nanostructured Fillers used for the Reinforcement of Nitrile Butadiene Rubber.” Her examiners, Colin Crick (from QMUL) and Anke Blume (from Uni of Twente) both commented on her excellent thesis and on how well prepared Kirsty was for her examination, where she was able to explore in detail all the different aspects of her thesis. Anke went on to say “Kirsty was one of the best candidates she has ever examined.”

Kirsty’s PhD project was funded by an Industrial Case Award from EPSRC and SLB in Cambridge, UK. SLB who have been impressed with several recent collaborations with QMUL have recently started a new fully funded PhD project with James Busfield’s group and another iCASE studentship with Ana Jorge Sobrido in SEMS.

James Busfield notes that “Kirsty has been a dedicated researcher in the Soft Matter Group for the last four years. She has discovered many new relationships between the properties of rubber compounds and the morphology of the reinforcing filler. Her first paper came out in 2023 and has already got a significant number of citations, demonstrating the importance of her work.”