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SUMMARY:Distinguished Lecture - Plastics for Good
DTSTART:20250516T171500
DTEND:20250516T181500
DTSTAMP:20260921T232813Z
UID:16fa2379d7732452a6308fa15d110ce3935719610afdfe109fd629c5
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Harm-Anton Klok\, Polymers Laboratory\, EPFL\nThe word p
 lastic is often associated with waste\, environmental pollution and excess
 ive use of fossil resources. At the same time\, however\, the emergence of
  synthetic polymers over the past century has been key to a vast number of
  technological advances\, and it is hard to envision our society without t
 his class of materials. Moving forward\, polymer-based materials will also
  be essential towards transitioning our society into a sustainable future.
  Polymers\, amongst others\, will be indispensable for the development of 
 technologies to support human health and well-being\, to help improve food
  safety and security\, and for energy harvesting and storage. The current 
 use of synthetic polymers\, however\, is not sustainable\, and needs to be
  radically revisited. Transitioning towards a more sustainable (ultimately
  circular) use of polymers is a great challenge\, not only scientifically 
 and technologically.\nIn this presentation\, I will first present some rec
 ent work from our laboratory that highlights the use of polymers for energ
 y harvesting and sensing\, and for the development of more sustainable agr
 icultural practices. The second part of this presentation will address the
  challenge towards finding solutions for a more sustainable production and
  use of polymers. One possible contribution towards a more sustainable pol
 ymer economy is to expand the range of renewable\, biological resources th
 at are available to produce polymer materials. Lignocellulosic biomass is 
 one example of a biological feedstock that has not yet been fully exploite
 d to produce materials that could complement other biosourced polymers or 
 replace fossil-resource based plastics. Two examples of biomass-derived po
 lymers will be highlighted to underline the potential of this feedstock to
 wards a circular polymer economy.\n\nBio: Harm-Anton Klok is Full Professo
 r at the Institutes of Materials\, and Chemical Sciences and Engineering a
 t the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) (Lausanne\, Switze
 rland). He studied chemical technology at the University of Twente (Ensche
 de\, The Netherlands) from 1989 to 1993 and received his Ph.D. in 1997 fro
 m the University of Ulm (Germany) after working with Martin Möller. After
  postdoctoral research with David N. Reinhoudt (University of Twente) and 
 Samuel I. Stupp (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign\, USA)\, he 
 joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Mainz\, Germany) in 
 early 1999 as a project leader in the group of Klaus Müllen. In March 200
 3 he joined EPFL.\n\n\n 
LOCATION:ELA 1 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==ELA%201 https://epfl.zoom.us/j/
 68918641730
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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