CER Researcher Scoops Top International Award
Stephen is congratulated on his award by Professor Robert H Schuster,
Managing Director of the German Institute of Rubber Technology
Dr Stephen Ronan who was a PhD researcher in CER and registered in the School of Manufacture and Design, has won the prestigious poster prize sponsored by Lanxess at the 8th Rubber Fall Colloquium (KHK) in November 2008 in Hanover. He won the award against competition from fifty other high quality entrants and received a certificate and €300 for the poster entitled ‘The Effect of Thermal Oxidation on the Stress Relaxation of Natural Rubber and Life Time Prediction’. He followed up this success with an award from the German Employers' Federation for the quality of his PHD.
Stephen emerged a winner because of the interdisciplinary crossover of Chemistry and Engineering in his research, capturing the ever increasing merging of science and technology at the borders of cutting-edge research. He was co-supervised by Professor Steve Jerrams and Dr Thomas Alshuth, Deputy Director and Head of Elastomer Physics at the German Institute of Rubber Technology (DIK). DIK is the world’s top rubber research institute where for three years Stephen and his friend John Mc Namara carried out the bulk of their research. Both are former graduates of DIT’s Faculty of Engineering and have gone on to complete highly original PhDs. John had the same supervision team and his dissertation was about localised dynamic behaviour at stress concentrations in rubber and predicting stress softening.
The enduring partnership between DIK and DIT began in 2000 and is testimony to the value of building strong international collaborations to achieve ground-breaking research. LANXESS is a world leader in chemical engineering, based in Germany, but with branches on every continent, 44 international production locations and over 15,000 employees worldwide.
Stephen has already been rewarded for his work with challenging positions in German industry initially as a process engineer for Motor Coring Technology MCT, Baker Hughes INTEQ and is now a project engineer for Continental Tyres, Hanover. John is now a project engineer with Timoney Technology in Ireland. We wish them both every success in their future careers. Click here for more information about DIK and Lanxess