Prof James Busfield has recently chaired the European Conference on Constitutive Modelling of Rubber XIV (ECCMR) from the 9-11 September 2026. Having hosted the conference previously at QMUL in 2003, the event was organised in a new location in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. There were 88 talks and 24 poster presentations filling a full three-day program.

Despite the best efforts of UK National Air Traffic Control System to mess up the program on the opening day, in the end only a small number of delegates did not arrive, with some delegates still turning up on the final day having had to deal with 48 hours of air travel chaos. James and the rest of the local organizing committee: James Lee (IOM3), Davide de Focatiis (Nottingham University) and Mokarram Hossain (Swansea University) had their work cut out to reorganize the schedule to ensure that every speaker was able to present once they had arrived.

The conference was a great success with a significant number of excellent talks including 7 from QMUL, that highlighted significant recent breakthroughs in the modelling of elastomer materials.

The local organizing committee would like to thank all the sponsors (Endurica, SPC Rubber Compounding, Birla Carbon, Dunlop, Leartiker, Coesfeld, Englemann & Buckham), the scientific committee members, the session chairs, the speakers and all of the delegates for the spirit of collaboration that has always been a very important feature of this conference.