Four Manchester academics made Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering

The Royal Academy of Engineering has today announced that four academics from ����Vlog�ٷ�, Professors Danielle George, Alan Partridge, and Rich Curry, and Visiting Professor Kirsty Armer will be part of the newest cohort of leading figures in the field of technology and engineering to be appointed Fellows.

They will be joining the Academy in its 50th year and are part of a cohort of 75 new Fellows, who are making an incredible impact across the engineering and technology sector with innovations in clean energy, AI, medicine and public health; joining leading figures who have influenced academia and business, worked to widen participation in engineering for people from underrepresented backgrounds, and provided expert policy advice to government.

Professors George, Armer, Partridge, and Curry will be formally admitted to the Academy at a special ceremony in London on 19 October, when each Fellow will sign the roll book. In joining the Fellowship, they will lend their unique capabilities to achieving the Academy’s aim to engineer better lives.

Sir John Lazar CBE FREng, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“This year’s cohort will be joining a community of over 1,700 top engineers and innovators in the UK and around the world. Together, we ensure that bright ideas are supported, scaled and shared, turning ambition into innovation and innovation into impact. We aim to strengthen education, skills and inclusion to inspire and equip the engineers of today and tomorrow.”

Manchester Academics awarded prestigious Colin Campbell Mitchell Award

The Academy has also awarded Professors Barry Lennox (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and Michael Fisher (Computer Science) the prestigious Colin Campbell Mitchell Award, given to a team of engineers who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of any field of UK engineering across the past four years. Visiting Professor Kirsty Hewitson was also part of the team receiving the Academy honour.

This year, it is given in recognition of the pioneering approach that the University of Manchester has been taking in its approach to developing robotic systems for deployment in hazardous environments.

Their work has delivered significant engineering, safety and economic benefits, including robotic deployments that reduce human exposure to dangerous environments, estimated savings of around £20 million for Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and a projected future value of £500 million through wider adoption of the technologies developed. They have also pioneered the use of digital twins and simulation environments to improve safety, training and operational efficiency, while contributing to the development of robotics policy and responsible AI practices in the UK and internationally.

Chair of the Academy’s Awards Committee, Luke Logan (FREng), said of the research,

"By translating robotics and AI research into real-world industrial applications, this team has transformed how hazardous and complex engineering tasks can be carried out. Their work is reducing risks to people, improving productivity and delivering substantial economic benefits across multiple sectors. Through an outstanding collaboration spanning industry, academia and the public sector, they have demonstrated how engineering innovation can deliver real-world impact."

When it is done well, in other words when your yogurt pots (polypropylene, PP) are sorted from your milk jugs (high density polyethylene), mechanical recycling is the most environmentally positive way to turn plastic waste into new products in a circular plastics economy, turning pots into pots and jugs into jugs.

However, poor sorting can lead to mixing polyolefins together, changing the way that the plastic degrades during the recycling process.

While well understood for polyethylene, the study, published in , focuses on what happens when PP is mixed with HDPE. Researchers found that contaminants act as stress aggregators, and that the phase separation caused by contamination weakens the material. While HDPE can tolerate a few percent contamination, even 1% of HDPE in PP alters the degradation mechanism.

The result of this contamination, even at this small scale, is a recyclate with radically altered physical properties, a change which impacts structure-property relationships and reduces the overall performance of the material, especially important in the context of their industrial reuse.

Researchers argue that while efforts have been made to normalise polymers based on processing history and end-use application, approaches like these only consider a limited number of material grades and do not represent the broad range of polyolefin grades and blends.

They suggest that cross-contamination needs better analytical tools that can serve as quality control in industrial processes, evidencing the need for better sortation in household and industrial recycling.

This paper was published in the journal: ChemCircularity

Full title: Measuring the impact of cross-contamination on quality in polyolefin blends

DOI:

Sixty years after the 1966 World Cup final, the most famous football in England's history has been examined as never before. NXCT at ����Vlog�ٷ� and the National Football Museum have produced the first 3D X-ray scans of the Slazenger Challenge 4 Star used at Wembley on July 30, 1966 – rendering, in extraordinary detail, both its 25-panel hand-stitched leather exterior, and the degraded latex bladder sealed inside it since the day England won the World Cup.

It is a portrait of a vanished craft. Each Challenge 4 Star took two-and-a-half hours to stitch by hand at the Slazenger works in Horbury, near Wakefield, and had to meet strict specifications. 14 to 16 ounces in weight, 27 to 28 inches in circumference. The ball earned its place in the final by winning a blind test of more than 100 footballs at The FA's headquarters. The now iconic orange was not a stylistic flourish, but a practical stand-out effect for the monochrome television sets of 1966.

Set against the ball used in this month's 2026 World Cup final, the scans make sixty years of progress impossible to miss. The Trionda is built from four thermally bonded panels of polyurethan, polyester, viscose and synthetic rubber, and carries an inertial measurement unit sensor that tracks every contact and position change. In 1966, the technology was a needle and thread.

The ball's journey to its casing at the National Football Museum is just as fascinating as the final it was used in. After England's 4-2 win in front of some 97,000 spectators, Helmut Haller – who had scored the opening goal – carried it back to Germany, claiming tradition entitled the first scorer to keep it. It stayed there for 30 years, until a consortium of the Mirror Group, Virgin, and Eurostar bought it for £80,000 and repatriated it ahead of Euro '96. The initials on its surface belong to Uri Geller, who signed it for luck as a pre-tournament publicity stunt.

Today, the ball sits on permanent display in the 'England on the World Stage' section of the National Football Museum, alongside Hurst's hat-trick shirt and other objects from the final. The museum marks the anniversary on Thursday 30 July with a programme of talks from its Visitor Experience team on the 1966 tournament and the final itself.

Dr Matthew Lawson, who performed the scans in the NXCT, said: "X-rays are a fantastic tool to non-destructively see inside objects, this technique has been used a lot in cultural heritage previously but never to look inside such a nationally significant football!

"Although a football is mostly air on the inside, we were able to see the makeup of the leather panels, the stitching and the perished air bladder in amazing detail thanks to X-ray computed tomography. Everyone at the NXCT in the University of Manchester would like to thank the National Football Museum for this exciting opportunity to scan such an artefact and to hold it in our own hands!"

Tim Desmond, CEO of the National Football Museum, said: "This is the most famous football in the country and, until now, nobody had ever properly looked inside it. What the scans give us is a window into how the game was made in 1966, the materials, the methods, the craft of a ball stitched by hand in a Yorkshire factory. It's also a measure of just how far the technology has travelled to reach the Trionda of 2026.

"We're a museum committed to educating ourselves and others, and to translating objects behind glass into stories people can get inside. As such, my thanks go to the University of Manchester for their expertise and curiosity that have created such a brilliant insight for our visitors and beyond. If you haven't seen it already, come and witness a slice of history for yourself."

The scroll was formally presented to the University during a visit by two of Rutherford’s great grand-daughters. The historic Rutherford gift has also inspired new named physics chair at Manchester

The gift strengthens the University's connection with one of the most influential scientists in history and the continuing leadership in the fields he helped create.

To mark the gift, the University has established the Ernest Rutherford Chair in Physics, a new named professorship within the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The chair will recognise leading researchers working in fields closely associated with Rutherford's scientific achievements, including nuclear, particle and accelerator physics. The new chair joins a distinguished group of named professorships in Physics at Manchester, including the Langworthy Chair, one of the oldest physics chairs in the world, the Regius chair in Physics established by royal patronage, and the Lovell Chair in Astrophysics.

Rutherford is widely regarded as the “father of nuclear physics”. During his time at Manchester between 1907 and 1919, he transformed the University's Physics Laboratory into one of the world's leading centres of scientific discovery.

Among the breakthroughs achieved in Manchester were the discovery of the atomic nucleus, the identification of the proton and the first artificial nuclear reaction, which is often referred to as “splitting the atom”. These achievements laid the foundations of our modern world, gave rise to the fields of nuclear and particle physics and led to innumerable technological, industrial and societal impacts

Professor Chris Parkes, Head of ����Vlog�ٷ� Physics and Astronomy Department, said: "Rutherford's years in Manchester changed our understanding of the physical world forever, shaping our understanding of atoms. The discoveries made here have shaped our world today and continue to influence scientific research more than a century later.

"We are delighted that Lord Rutherford's descendants have chosen Manchester as the home for this important historical document. It is a powerful recognition of the University's role in preserving and celebrating Rutherford's remarkable legacy and our continuing world leadership in research in the fields of nuclear and particle physics"

Jenny Joy and Caroline Roberts descendants of Rutherford, added: “We wanted this scroll to be seen and used as part of his legacy as it has hardly ever seen the light of day, and it is a valuable stunning historical document in its own right”

During their visit, members of Rutherford's family took a tour of the Physics department, including seeing his original desk and visiting modern facilities that continue the Manchester tradition of cutting-edge research in his areas of interest.

It was in the University's former Physics Laboratory – now known as the Rutherford Building – that Rutherford led a team of pioneering scientists whose work revolutionised our understanding of the atom.

His influence extended far beyond his own discoveries. Rutherford’s work established Manchester as an international centre of scientific excellence, allowing the University to attract many renowned scientists to continue his legacy. He is also well known for mentoring many of the leading physicists of the twentieth century. The historic scroll will be preserved within the University's collections, ensuring that future generations can continue to learn about the scientist whose discoveries in Manchester changed the world.

The , authored by the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub at ����Vlog�ٷ�, explores the consequences of terminology choices on end-of-life solutions for plastic waste. While recycling has long been touted as a solution for plastic sustainability - it comes in many forms, and can sometimes serve as a smokescreen for genuine discussions around sustainability.

The researchers, Seiztinger, Lahive, and Shaver, find directional terms - such as ‘upcycling’ and ‘downcycling’ - to be poorly defined as value propositions, and that their use can skew perceptions of the benefits, potentially posing barrier to circularity.

‘Downcycling’, for instance, implies the production of a less favourable or ‘less good’ material as the end product of the recycling process, while ‘upcycling’ has positive connotations. However, despite what these terms suggest, a ‘downcycled’ stream may produce a high value product, while an ‘upcycled’ path may have a greater negative environmental impact than alternative routes.

Using these terms assigns disproportionate value to certain end-of-life plastic solution strategies, and can be used by supporters or detractors of different recycling technologies to obscure genuine evaluation of their environmental impact.

The study, published in the journal , suggests that plastic waste solutions consistently fail to live up to their marketed messaging, and that clearer communication of the true value of the product from a recycling process is essential to drive investment in proper plastic waste management. Corresponding author, Professor of Polymer Science at ����Vlog�ٷ�, said: “The confused terminology surrounding the fate of waste plastic often lacks a consideration of value and unintended consequences. As these terms are now being used to promote technologies outside of a sustainable system, we felt it important to argue for clarity and caution when presuming quality from this directional terminology.”

The researchers argue that no single solution offers a quick fix, and that it is wrong for the terminology to suggest otherwise. They call for greater clarity over how we value end-products. They suggest a ‘spiral system’ of reuse, in which plastic materials are treated as complex mixtures that, like crude oil, can be chemically deconstructed at the end of their life and transformed to become a huge range of longer-lasting products over their lifetime.

For example, a yoghurt pot could be reconstituted into car parts, and then after that into a park bench. Ultimately, after many years of service, it could be chemically deconstructed, and turned back into a yoghurt pot. As the polypropylene in such simple packaging is already used in cars, hard shell suitcases, garden furniture, appliances, and plumbing, a cross-sector approach to reuse of plastic waste could generate more value than an approach focused solely on single-use packaging.

By moving away from direction-loaded terminology, researchers suggest that plastic waste solutions can be judged on the measurable environmental and economic value of the end-products, rather than an assumed or subjective value based on language, that is not always supported by full life-cycle assessment or economic analysis.

Dr Claire Seitzinger added: “Building a circular plastics economy means looking at the whole system, not isolated solutions pitched against each other. Policy, industry, innovation and collaboration across sectors are essential for a sustainable future. The next time you eat a yoghurt, where do you want the pot to end up? Should it become another yoghurt pot? A park bench? A car? What is best? And what should you, the packaging producer, or the government do to make that to happen?”

Paper details:

Journal: Cambridge Prisms: Plastics 

Full title: Up, down and back again: Value judgements in polymer recycling

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2026.10041.pr1