The Postdoc Symposium is the main postdoctoral event of the year and promotes the excellent research of our postdoctoral researchers. It’s organised by the Postdoc Committee, with support from the Department.

Postdoctoral researchers are invited to submit abstracts and present their work with posters or talks, to an audience comprised of academics, researchers and staff in the Department. Prizes are awarded for the top presentations, including the Sir William Wakeham Award which comes with a £2000 prize.

Postdoc Symposium 2022

Keynote

Career Panel with Dr Ceri Hammond, Dr Anna Hankin, Dr Yuval Elani and Dr Francesca Ceroni

Oral presentations

  • Alain Li - From haemoglobin to single-site hydrogenation catalyst
  • Pedro Verdía Barbará - Production of micro-fibrillated cellulose from waste wood using protic ionic liquids
  • Gunjan Tyagi - Light-activated surfactants for fast anti-microbial action: Self-assembly and membrane solubilization
  • Carsten Wedler - Thermophysical properties of hydrogen for flow metrology in the hydrogen infrastructure
  • Yubing Hu - Holographic sensors for biochemical diagnostics
  • Rochelle Aw - Utilising the Industrial Expression Platform Pichia Pastoris for the Production of Vaccine Targets
  • Felipe Antonio Perdomo Hurtado - Design of Lipophilic Solvents Systems for Energy-efficient CO2 Capture by Absorption
  • Selene Pirola - Predicting Dissection Risk in Ascending Aortic Aneurysm Using Patient-specific Image-based CFD
  • Hui Luo - Glycerolyser: Sustainable Electrochemical Glycerol Partial Oxidation for Hydrogen Production
  • Pavani Cherukupally - Surface-Engineered Sponges: An Emerging Affordable Solution for Oil Recovery from Wastewaters to Pathogen Removal from Contaminated Rivers

William Wakeham Award winners 

Winner: Dr Heather Au

Highly commended: Dr Pavani Cherukupally

Highly commended: Dr Gan Huang

Chemical Engineering prizes

Best oral presentation: Dr Gunjan Tyagi

Best poster presentation: Dr Matyas Daboczi

Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering (IMSE) prizes

Best oral presentation: Dr Alain Li

Best poster presentation: Dr Vivek Verma

Postdoc symposium 2020 recording

The recording of the Symposium is available online (log-in required).

Past symposia

Postdoc symposium 2019

Keynote lecture

Patrizia Marchetti, Life beyond the postdoc: my story

Postdoc talks

  • Coby Clarke, Ionogel Surfaces
  • Mo Qiao, Oxygenophilic Ionic Liquids Promote Oxygen Reduction Reaction Catalysis in Nanocarbons
  • Brice Saint-Michel, Bubble Motion in Yield-Stress Fluids
  • Sara Febra, The SAFT-γ Mie group contribution approach in the prediction of properties of systems relevant to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)
  • Carlos Pozo, On the design of sustainable electricity mixes
  • Anna Hankin, Design and Development of Photo-electrochemical Hydrogen Production Systems

William Wakeham Award winners 

  • Antonio Del Rio Chanona
  • Ruijiao Dong, Bio-Inspired Information-Containing Polymers with the Precision of Nature

Postdoc symposium 2020

Keynote lecture

Alex Brogan, The Long and Winding Road from Postdoc to Academia

Postdoc talks

  • Rochelle Aw, Utilising the Industrial Expression Platform Pichia Pastoris for the Production of Vaccine Targets
  • Felipe Antonio Perdomo Hurtado, Design of Lipophilic Solvents Systems for Energy-efficient CO2 Capture by Absorption
  • Selene Pirola, Predicting Dissection Risk in Ascending Aortic Aneurysm Using Patient-specific Image-based CFD
  • Hui Luo, Glycerolyser: Sustainable Electrochemical Glycerol Partial Oxidation for Hydrogen Production
  • Pavani Cherukupally, Surface-Engineered Sponges: An Emerging Affordable Solution for Oil Recovery from Wastewaters to Pathogen Removal from Contaminated Rivers

William Wakeham Award winners 

Winner

Yu Huang, Fibrinogen-mimicking, Multi-arm Nanovesicles for Targeted Thrombolytic Therapy

Highly commended

Maja Rucker, From Molecular Interactions to Darcy-scale Flow Responses - the Impact of Wetting on Multiphase Flow in Porous Media
Ignacio Moya Ramirez, Low-cost Biosensors to Test the Integrity of mRNAs 

Poster presentation winners

  • Best talk: Rochelle Aw, “Utilising the Industrial Expression Platform Pichia Pastoris for the Production of Vaccine Targets”
  • Best multidisciplinary talk: Selene Pirola, “Predicting Dissection Risk in Ascending Aortic Aneurysm Using Patient-specific Image-based CFD”
  • Best poster: Inyoung Jang, “Tailoring the Ratio of A-Site Cations in Pr1–xNdxBaCo1.6Fe0.4O5+δ to Promote the Higher Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity for LT-SOFC”
  • Best multidisciplinary poster: Suela Jonuzaj, “Solvent mixture design and optimization for the integrated purification in pharmaceutical manufacturing”

Recording

The recording of the Symposium is available on the  for internal use only.

Postdoc symposium 2018

The symposium took place on 25 April 2018 at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Lecture Theatre 1 and the SCR. 

Keynote presentation by Sir William Wakeham, former Head of Department and current visiting professor.

Download the 

Programme 

13:00-14:00

Lunch in the Chem Eng SCR

14:00-14:45

Keynote lecture: Employability of STEM graduates and a sample of one

14:45-14:50

Presentation of Sir William Wakeham Awards

14:50-15:10

Tao Li

Ceramic Hollow Fiber - Advanced Fabrication to Functionalization 

15:10-15:30

Lisa Joss

X-ray CT imaging of gas adsorption to characterize nanoporous materials
15:30-15:50 Tea and coffee  

15:50-16:10

Suela Jonuzaj

 Designing optimal solvents and solvent mixtures from atom groups for separation processes

16:10-16:30

Robert Woodward

Hypercrosslinked microporous polymer sorbents for the efficient recycling of a soluble acide catalyst in cellulose hydrolysis

16:30-16:50

Nathaniel Cooper Development of Resource Mapping Tools for Biomass Supply Chain Optimisations 

16:50-17:10

Silvia Di Lecce Development of intermolecular potential model for aqueous carboxylate salts solution using SAFT - y Mie

17:10-17:30

Huaiyu Yang Continuous Protein Crystallisation 

17:30-17:50

Isaac Sugden  Accurate and Efficient Handling of Molecular Flexibility in Crystal Structure Prediction 

17:50-18:10

Ana Quiroga-Campano Mathematical model to predict chemotherapy outcomes

18:10

Wine reception and Poster Session in Chem Eng SCR  

Organising committee

Alex Brogan, Emily Chapman, Danilo Cuccato, Sarah Hedberg, George Jackson, Cleo Kontoravdi, Mihaela Stevar, Sneha Saunders, Peter Yatsyshin

Postdoc symposium 2017

The symposium took place on 27 April 2017 at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Lecture Theatre 1 and the SCR. 

Keynote presentation by Professor Nilay Shah, Head of Department.

Download the Postdoc Symposium 2017 Programme and Abstracts (.pdf)

Programme 

09:30–10:00

Keynote presentation: Professor Nilay Shah, Head of Department

10:00–10:20

Piers Gaffney

Liquid Phase Oligonucleotide Synthesis with Membrane Separation for Efficient Large Scale Manufacturing

10:20–10:40

Michael Dallaston

The dynamic formation of iterated structures in thin films

10:40–11:00

Lisa Joss

Measuring gas adsorption isotherms in three dimensions by X-ray computed tomography

11:00–11:15

Coffee break

 

11:15–11:35

Carlos Pozo

Cooperation and full transparency for climate change mitigation

11:35–11:55

Konstantinos Christoforidis

Combined CO2 Capture and Photocatalytic Conversion using advanced materials

11:55–12:15

Aiman Alam Nazki

From basic enzymatic building blocks to bacterial signalling pathways: a systematic elucidation of spatial regulation and compartmentalization of biochemical pathways

12:15–12:20

Presentation of Sir William Wakeham awards

12:20–12:40

Petr Yatsyshin

Computational statistical mechanical framework for soft condensed matter. Mean-field description of wetting at the nanoscale

12:40 – 13:00

Robert Woodward

Hierarchically porous carbon foams via emulsion-templated polymers

Organising committee

Postdocs: Alex Brogan, Peter Yatsyshin

Academics: George Jackson, Cleo Kontoravdi

Support staff: Geneviève Timmins, Nathalie Simpson

Postdoc symposium 2016

The symposium took place on 18 April 2016 at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Lecture Theatre 1 and the SCR. 

Read a write up of the event: The 2016 Chemical Engineering postdoc symposium.

Keynote lecture by Professor Dame Julia Higgins, Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator, "How on Earth did I get here?".

Download the symposium programme and abstract book.

Schedule:

12:00–13:00 Lunch and Poster session in departmental senior common room
13:10–13:50 Keynote lecture: Professor Dame Julia Higgins, Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator, Imperial College London
How on Earth did I get here?
13:50–14:10 Susie Sou
Understanding the impact of mild hypothermia on monoclonal antibody glycosylation in CHO cell cultures through experimental and computational analyses
14:10–14:30 Benjamin Aymard
Multiphase flows in confinement with complex geometry
14:30–14:50 Paul Balcombe
Determining the distribution of natural gas supply chain emissions
14:50–15:10  Break
15:10–15:30 Matthew Hennessey
Instability-driven 3D patterning of deformable polymer networks
15:30–15:50 Anna Hankin
Design and development of photo-electrochemical reactors for hydrogen production with solar energy
15:50–16:10 Lyes Kahouadji
The code BLUE: massively parallel direct numerical simulation of three-dimensional multi-phase flows
16:10–16:30 Sir William Wakeham Award Winner: Patrizia Marchetti
Molecular separation with organic solvent nanofiltration: membrane characterisation and process prediction
16:30–16:50 Sir William Wakeham Award WinnerAgi Brandt-Talbot
Turning trees into chemicals using ionic liquids
16:50–17:00 Closing remarks and prizes
17:00–19:00 Wine reception in the SCR
Summary of the table's contents

Organising Committee

Academics: Cleo Kontoravdi, George Jackson
Postdocs: Yoli Sanchez-Vicente, Alex Brogan, Peter Yatsyshin, Mihaela Stevar, Ju Zhu
Support staff: Zoe Townsend, Michael Panagopulos

Postdoc symposium 2015

The 2015 Imperial College London, Department of Chemical Engineering Postdoc Symposium was held at the Department on 23 September 2015. Read a write-up with photos from the event

Programme

Download the symposium Programme and abstract book 
 
Keynote speaker: Pinky Dua, Senior Director and Head of Clinical Pharmacology, Pfizer
Talk title: Modelling and simulation in drug discovery and development
 
 
Schedule
  
12:00–13:30 Lunch and Poster session in Level 3 Design Rooms
13:30 Keynote lecture: Pinky Dua, Senior Director and Head of Clinical Pharmacology, Pfizer
Modelling and simulation in drug discovery and development
14:10 Lisa Kleiminger
Closing the renewable energy gap – energy storage employing solid oxide electrolysers
14:30 Santanu Karan
Sub–10 nm polyamide nanofilms with ultrafast solvent transport for molecular separation
14:50 Alessandra Vitale
Coupling frontal photopolymerization and surface instabilities for a novel 3D patterning process
15:10 Break
15:30 Qilei Song
Molecularly designed functional nanomaterials for energy and sustainability 
15:50 Angelo Pomella
Understanding cell rupture mechanisms in ultrasonication for bioprocessing applications
16:10 Alex Brogan
Protein-polymer surfactant nanoconstructs for increased solubility and thermal stability in ionic liquids
16:30 Sir William Wakeham Award lecture: James Kimber
ATR-FTIR Spectroscopic imaging of dynamic processes
16:55 Closing remarks & prizes
17:00–18:00 Informal drinks in the SCR

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Academics: Cleo Kontoravdi, George Jackson
Postdoc representatives: Yoli Sanchez-Vicente, Maria Jimenez Solomon, Peter Yatsyshin
Support staff: Zoe Townsend, Michael Panagopulos

Pilot plant