4-year fully funded EPSRC iCASE PhD studentship (P&G – Bristol)
“Exploring sustainable antibacterial solutions for personal hygiene products”
The pandemic is affecting how consumers perceive clean and fuelling demands for more hygiene products to maintain personal cleanliness. This PhD project, in collaboration with P&G, the world’s largest personal care products manufacturer, aims to develop new technologies and exploring sustainable solutions with in-depth mechanistic learning to bring antibacterial products into the marketplace. In addition to hygiene benefits to consumers, high performance products will reduce disposal wastes and environment impact. This study will focus on studying the mechanisms of antibacterial fibre and nonwoven materials. The complex geometric and chemical nature of fibres makes the study challenging and widespread product use drives an urgent need for developing sustainable fibres. Antimicrobial agents (AMA) with mode of actions varying from microbial cell membrane disruption to metabolic disruption will be studied, including peptides and antimicrobials of plant origin. New surface modification strategies will be developed to enable robust AMA immobilization on fibre substrates to deliver durable performance and minimize migration risk, which will be evaluated for industrial scale- up feasibility. The scientific insights are expected to enable new material developments ownable to the company, when taking regulation, safety, and environment constraints into consideration. Advanced experimental capabilities will be leveraged such as visualizing/quantifying AMA-bacteria interactions in real time by fluorescent microscope, AFM, SEM, CryoTEM, synchrotron X-ray and neutron scattering.
Potential applicants (UK residents or EU citizens with settled status) should have a strong 4- year degree in Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, or Biochemistry. To apply to Bristol Chemistry, please follow the link here. For further information, please email academic supervisor Professor Wuge H. Briscoe [Email Address Removed] and industrial supervisor Dr Meng Chen [Email Address Removed]; or [Email Address Removed]. Further information on P&G can be found at https://www.pg.co.uk.
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