EPSRC CDT in Plastic Electronic Materials 2020 Symposium

Prof Nam-Gyu Park

This year incorporating the CPE’s relaunching event, the PE-CDT’s Annual Symposium was held entirely online over two afternoons.

The PE-CDT Annual Symposium is a highlight of our students' year and 2020 was no different as we heard the excellent late stage review talks from Cohort 9, an alumni panel session, talks by our distinguished external speakers and CPE research theme area talks from CPE theme champions.

Adapting to the strangest of times, while this year’s symposium was held online it didn’t stop us from getting together for a special couple of afternoons of science.

Ever since the CPE’s rebranding process was approved at the College level to Imperial Centre for Processable Electronics we had been hoping to celebrate with a series of talks introducing our new research theme areas. But while COVID-19 resulted in many changes of plan, the CPE incorporated its relaunching event into the PE-CDT’s Annual Symposium.

To kick off the sessions, we welcomed back Prof Donal Bradley, the first director of the CPE to say a few words about the CPE and his current research endeavours. Later, we heard from our theme leads and champions in our three new research areas, Magda Titirici for Sustainable Energy Materials, Felice Torrisi for Soft Electronic Materials and Matt Fuchter for Emerging Technologies.

Our invited external speakers Prof John De Mello, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Prof Nam-Gyu Park, Sungkyunkwan University and Prof Christoph Brabec, Erlangen University all kindly agreed to give research talks and three of our alumni – Dr Thomas Hodsden, Dr Madeleine Morris and Dr Sebastian Wood – join us on an interactive panel session.

While running these events entirely online is a new experience for all of us, we all agree that continuing scientific discussion during these unprecedented times of COVID is worth the effort and we are delighted that so many of you were able to join us.

Cohort 9 prizes:

• Best PhD talk: Nick Siemons
• Runner up PhD talks: Helen Bristow and Katie Stewart