Photos showing field trials of five Nupik PP cups in a Dorset field. Five cups were positioned 15 cm apart on open ground and covered with chicken wire mesh to prevent being blown away in the wind. They were monitored for 24 months: (a) the initial set-up in Jan 2021; (b) showing the cups 14 months later and, May 2022, one of these (inset) was removed for laboratory testing; and (c) showing the remaining four cups 24 months later, and close up (inset). Read full paper of our lab analysis here.

Gemma Ware and I made a podcast for The Conversation on how we ended up with so much plastic waste and what we can do about it. My suggestion is that we need to move to an economic model where companies can only sell products into regions where the waste infrastructure exists to collect, reuse, repair and finally recycle those products. Listen here.

The airlines are magicians. The magic lies in how the airlines have positioned flying as a minor part of the environmental crisis, and one which they will soon solve. They have used the classic techniques of magicians to weave this illusion: distraction, manipulation but above all psychology. We all want to believe in the magic of sustainable flight they offer us, even though it is fantasy. Read full article here

It’s a Gas was also named as one of the Daily Telegraph’s science books of the year.

Growing a successful UK repair economy needs local, regional and national coordination – but it can help tackle many negative environmental and social impacts including reducing electronic waste, material consumption, mitigating supply chain risk, and regional inequality. 

Read the full paper here.

My new book has been published! Read an excerpt here.

Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some power our engines while others make drinks fizzy? In It’s a Gas, I reveal an invisible world you have probably never thought much about.

Taking us back to that exhilarating – and often dangerous – moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what they had discovered, I show that gases are the formative substances of our modern world, each with its own weird and wonderful personality.

We see how seventeenth-century laughing gas parties led to the first use of anaesthetics in surgery, how the invention of the air valve in musical instruments gave us bicycles, cars and trainers, and how gases made us masters of the sea (by huge steamships) and skies (via extremely flammable balloons). This book reveals the immense importance of gases to modern civilisation. Read an excerpt here

I am one of number of authors calling for worldwide action to halt the environmental threats posed by single-use electronic devices. Our letter was published in the journal Science.

Modern life would quite literally fall apart without glues – they hold our buildings, our phones, even our bodies together. But the story of stickiness runs much deeper than that. In fact, our greatest leaps forward as a species couldn’t have happened without adhesives.

In this series we chart the journey of human progress through the sticky substances that have shaped us. In episode one we explore the very earliest adhesives, dating back at least 190,000 years, that allowed our ancestors to invent, innovate, and make the first tools. And we hears how lumps of these prehistoric glues contain fragments of the stone age people who used them, trapped in time for thousands of years. Listen here or where ever you get your podcasts.

Producer: Anand Jagatia
Presenter: Mark Miodownik
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
BBC Studios Audio Production

I am part of a new Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Mission Hub which aims to tackle the urgent environmental challenge of plastic pollution and create new ways for the sustainable deconstruction of synthetic plastics as the UK transitions towards a circular plastics economy. 

The hub will be led by Professor Andrew Pickford (University of Portsmouth), with support from scientists from seven leading UK institutions, including UCL co-investigators: Professor Helen Hailes (UCL Chemistry), Dr Jack Jeffries (UCL Biochemical Engineering), Professor Mark Miodownik (UCL Mechanical Engineering), Professor Paola Lettieri (UCL Chemical Engineering), Dr Andrea Paulillo (UCL Chemical Engineering), Dr Brooks Paige (UCL Centre for Artificial Intelligence), Professor Christine Orengo (UCL Biosciences).   

Over the next five years, the Mission Hub will develop impactful engineering biology platforms that will enhance the performance of enzymes and microbes for the deconstruction of a wide range of plastics.  

Building on previous research from the Plastic Waste Hub at UCL, the project will also develop innovative and environmentally friendly ways to create high-value products from waste. 

A new research paper from my research group shows the latest developments in our work developing wearable assistive linkage fabrics. The work was led by PhD student Christian Partik. We are developing wearable assistive devices that can actively modulate stiffness on demand is envisioned to support joints and facilitate limb movement. This paper shows how this can be done using phase change materials.  Read the paper here.