8 Nov 2024
Meet the WISE Fellows – Catherine Aitchinson
In this series of interviews, you will meet the WISE Fellows. This time you will meet Professor Catherine Aitchinson, who has joined Linköping University as a WISE Fellow.
11 Sep 2024
WISE industrial partners – Nexam Chemical
Cooperation between academia and industry is an important part of WISE. We have talked to Christer Svanberg, CTO at Nexam Chemical, who together with Professor Christian Müller at Chalmers University of Technology runs a WISE research project.
According to Christer Svanberg, the pressure for increased recycling of plastics will continue and intensify over the coming years. He also mentions that there is an urgent need to address the challenges in the transformation towards a more sustainable use of plastics, which according to him is a huge challenge, but also a big business opportunity.
What is your research project about?
It is about “Reactive Recycling of Polyolefins”, a deep scientific understanding of a novel concept developed by Nexam Chemical to improve properties of recycled polyolefins.
What benefits have you seen so far in participating as an industry partner in the WISE research program?
This collaboration between industry and academia is a win-win-win. Nexam gets deep scientific understanding such that we can truly master the technology and maximize its potential, which in a longer perspective, will lead to new business opportunities. In addition to the huge commercial potential, the scientific question posed in this project is very interesting and can lead to new insight into fundamental polymer chemistry. Thirdly, this project is addressing one of the big challenges in our society: how to transform to more circular use of plastics?
Have you seen any personal benefits linked to this cooperation?
This project is a great opportunity for Amin Keivanshokouh to fulfill his ambition to do a PhD. For Nexam, there’s a huge benefit that Amin can remain part of our company and that he is building expertise that will be strategically important for the company in the coming years. Nexam is a small company and without the financial support from WISE, Nexam would not have been able to make the commitment of having one researcher dedicated to do a PhD for four to five years.
