The latest International Rubber Conference 2026 was hosted in Japan from the 3-6 November 2026. At the closing ceremony two of James Busfield’s team, Max Dixey (2nd from the right) and Omar Dilery (5th from the right) were announced as winners of IRCO best student presentation awards. Max spoke about “Assessment of Dihydrazide Carbon Black Activators in Model Tyre Tread Compounds”. Max’s talk was coauthored with James and Keizo Akutagawa and colleagues from the project sponsors Continental Tires and Orion Carbon in Germany. Omar spoke about “The effect of smear wear formation on the friction and heat build-up of a tyre tread surface” in collaboration with James and colleagues from the project sponsors, Dunlop in Japan.

Prof James Busfield commented that, "It is amazing that we picked up two awards this year. I am really impressed with Max who completed a double this year having picked up the top presentation award at Tiretech in March. With Omar it is amazing that a PhD student who started in the summer can already win such a prestigious international award when there were a huge number of student presentations to choose from at the event. It is a great reflection of the team.” Omar and Max were part of a QMUL delegation that gave seven presentations this year.

Max and Omar are now the 11th and 12th members of James’ team to win IRCO best student awards at the IRC since they were first introduced in 2016. Previous winners include Richard Windslow (2016), Francesca Carleo (2016), Leihao Chen (2019), Eduardo Yanes (2019), Anureet Kaur (2021), Kirsty Rutherford (2022), Aaron Duncan (2022), William Kyei-Manu (2023), Evangelos Koliolios (2023) and Sarah Pedroni (2025). James went to add “There is now added pressure on all the Soft Matter Group students that will go to the USA with me and present at IRC2027 to maintain our track record.”