Postdoc Appreciation Week: Opening Event

One of the aims of my research group is to investigate the properties of boron-containing small molecules and their potential as new drugs. With just a handful of B-containing drugs available in the market, we believe that computational chemistry methods are essential in expanding the knowledge in this field. During this talk I will explain the methodologies we routinely employ for the simulation of binding energies and how we are going to implement it on B-containing molecules. I will also show an example of a computational study we recently performed on the reactivity of boronic acids and how it relates to the results observed by experimental collaborators.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are a family of microbial bio-based and biodegradable biopolymers with potential to replace traditional polymers as well as play a role in novel applications in the packaging, textiles, agriculture, automotive, electronics, and biomedical industries, such as tissue engineering. Production scale-up at pilot-scale is a crucial step in the translation of promising laboratory scale performance to industrial scale production and commercialisation. This brief talk is intended to provide an overview of the current landscape of pilot-scale PHA production literature, to elucidate important trends, achievements, knowledge gaps and opportunities for future research and development.