Prof. Ramesh Babu, Trinity College Dublin, Lead Principle Investigator and Project Co-ordinator

Prof. Ramesh graduated from the Department of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai, India in 1998 with a Ph.D in Chemistry. He has over 20years of experience in polymeric materials, nanocomposites, membranes, Biodegradable polymers, Sustainable polymers and characterisation. Before joining TCD he worked in Clariant Gmbh and Asahi-Kasei Corporation, Japan, Central development and research labs where his work involved developing polymer based products for various applications including membranes, packaging films, foams and automotive components. Prof. Ramesh is Principal Investigator and Research Associate Professor in TCD’s School of Chemistry & CRANN and leads the Polymeric Materials and Nanocomposite group (www.physics.tcd.ie/pmnc). He is also an  investigator in AMBER materials research centre, BiOrbic Bioeconomy research centre, DPTC, Dairy processing technology centre, and Food for health. He is also co-founder of spin-out companies Bioplastech Ltd and Selfsence technologies and founding member and director for Irish Bioeconomy foundation. His Industrial collaboration includes  Medtronic, Mergon, Innovative Polymer Compounds, Merck Millipore, Rogers, Glanbia , Nypro and Logitech.New Paragraph

Prof. Kevin O'Connor, UCD

Prof O’Connor is Professor at the School Of Biomolecular & Biomedical Science in UCD. He is the founder and CEO of BIOPLASTECH, a UCD spin out company converting waste to biodegradable polymer. He has developed and patented technology for producing biodegradable polymer. He has collaborated with Dr Ramesh Babu (AMBER PI) to develop applications for biodegradable polymers. He leads a research group investigating biocatalysis and metabolic engineering. They focus on two major areas 1) biodegradable polymer synthesis by bacteria and 2) Enzymes as biocatalysts in the ransformation of aromatic and aliphatic substrates. He has filed 8 patents and licensed 3 patents relating to biopolymers. He is a member of the European Commission biobased products expert group. He served for 4 years as a member of the European Commission committee entitled the “lead market initiative for Bio-based products.New Paragraph

Bryan Dalton, UCD

Bryan graduated from the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2015 in Env. Science (BSc). He moved to San Francisco in 2016 on a Graduate Visa where he started working with biotech start-up Mango Materials at Silicon Valley Clean Water and the United States Department of Agriculture. As a Research Assistant in a small but fast-growing start-up he was heavily involved with the pilot plant operations and the R&D for scale-up at Mango Materials from 2017 to 2020. His main focus was on the novel testing and optimisation for the downstream processing of the methane-based polymer polyhydroxybutyrate. 

Bryan joined the BioPost project team in September and is currently working in BiOrbic (Bioeconomy SFI Research Centre @ UCD) as a Research Assistant.

Purabi Bhagabati, TCD

Dr. Purabi Bhagabati received her PhD in the area of Polymer Science from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India in the year of 2016. She has received National Post-doctoral individual research grant from Science and Engineering Research Board, Government of India and worked on Bioplastic synthesis, processing & product development, and composting process. In her project, she developed pilot scale technology for production of ultra-crystalline Poly(ԑ-caprolactone) in one batch. After completion of her Post-doctoral fellowship, in 2019 she worked as Research Associate (3) in Department of Biotechnology, Government of India funded multi-institutional project, where she was acting as leading researcher from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Towards end of 2019 to end of 2020 She has worked as Project manager in 'NRL-Center of Excellence on Sustainable Material’. Her primary research focus is on Polymers science & Chemistry, Bioplastics, Value addition to wastes. Dr. Bhagabati joined the BioPost project in the month of October 2020 and currently working as Post-doctoral research fellow in TCD. New Paragraph

Jessica De Micco, TCD

Jessica graduated in Chemistry, at Federico II University in Naples, Italy (2016). Given her passion for the environment she decided to move to Amsterdam (2017) for attending the Chemistry Master –Science for Energy and Sustainability shared between the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. During her studies she worked with polymers blends and biodegradable and compostable materials. Jessica joined the BIOPOST project team on February, 2021 working at Trinity College of Dublin as Research Assistant.New Paragraph

Percy Foster

Percy Foster is an environmentalist and waste management professional and has been involved in the waste sector for over twenty years. He originally trained as environmental scientist (B Sc Hons) and developed a passion for research while doing his Masters of Science.  He has worked in Ireland, Europe and United Arab Emirates on various waste materials, waste tyres, contaminated soils but has a passion for development of the recycling of food waste to create quality compost to help aid healthy soils.

As CEO for Cré- Composting and Anaerobic Digestion Association of Ireland from 2006 to the present, Percy has coordinated and managed the activities of the association, representing the composting and anaerobic digestion industry at Government and European level. He is a former board member of the European Compost Network.

Tony Breton

Tony has been a strategic advisor specialising in resource management, bio-based products and public affairs with Novamont, Europe’s largest manufacturer of bioplastics since 2006, previous to which he was Communications Manager at the UK Composting Association. He is a Director Cré and the UK Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association whilst also sitting on the Steering Committee for the UK’s main organic waste recycling body. He is also highly active in international standardisation being the UK representative on the CEN bio-based products committee whilst also chairing a number of BSI committees including its main packaging committee and is the nominated UK expert at ISO level for plastics in the environment.New Paragraph