Congratulations to Dr Maria del Mar Vizcaino Vergara who has passed her PhD defence on the 13th March 2026 for a thesis entitled, “Physical Ageing of Carbon Black Filled Rubber.” Maria del Mar completed her PhD journey as a joint student working between QMUL and KTH in Stockholm in Sweden. At QMUL she was a member of James Busfield’s Soft Matter Group in SEMS and at KTH she was in the Marcus Wallenberg Laboratory for Sound and Vibration supervised by Prof Leif Kari. She was financially supported throughout by a Swedish Research Council Grant.

Maria del Mar took the KTH examination route and therefore had to make a public defence both presenting her work and then being interrogated by Prof Essi Sarlin from Tampere University and a panel of expert examiners in front of a large public audience. Prof James Busfield, who was in the audience at KTH said. “I was very impressed by the clear way that Maria del Mar explained her work throughout this 2 and a half hour final examination. The Swedish examination route is much more stressful than the one that we are used to in the UK. Maria del Mar was an excellent PhD student and we have already published four papers on her work.”

Maria del Mar was the sixth student from James’ group to complete her PhD in the last 12 months. She is now taking a well-earned holiday in Spain and then she will return to her Senior FEA Engineer role at Scania in Sweden next month.