At the first SEMS graduation ceremony on the 27th July 2026, three PhD students graduated from James Busfield’s Soft Matter Group at QMUL. Dr Kirsty Rutherford completed her PhD on the modelling of the viscoelastic behaviour of reinforcing fillers and Dr Aaron Duncan completed his PhD on modelling of the ageing of rubber. Both were funded by EPSRC iCASE award in collaboration with SLB and had Dr Dimitrios Papageorgiou as their second supervisor. Dr Eathan Plaschka worked on modelling the wear processes in tyre tread compounds. His PhD was funded by an F1 team, who now employ him as a tyre engineer.

During the graduation, Prof Keizo Akutagawa, who supported all three projects, was with James on the stage. James Busfield reflected that it was great that all three were able to graduate together. The three of them have done brilliantly producing 7 journal papers and 25 conference presentations in total between them all based on their different PhD studies.