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The IAA Impact Festival was held on 3rd September 2025 at the Studio, Glasgow. Andreia’s talk, titled “Soft Matter matters: generating impact through University-Industry collaborations” took the audience on her research journey collaborating with industry, specifically with the company Hyaltech.
ECFP’s collaboration with Hyaltech now spans several years, however the support from EPSRC IAA enabled us to conduct a collaborative project with the company. In this project, the company was interested in being able to characterise the rheological behaviour Opthalmic Viscosurgical Devices, such that they can understand how the material will behave under certain parameters and stresses. Through this project, was how Andreia came in contact with the company.
The project team deployed both shear and extensional rheology to fully characterise the material’s flow behaviour. It enabled Dr Ben Robertson from Hyaltech to spend time on-site at the University to conduct experiments himself and in collaboration with ECFP. Additionally, they constructed a formulation space map to demonstrate how changing certain parameters affects the rheological behaviour of the material. The team found that different parameters affect the material’s shear and extensional behaviour differently.
This IAA supported project generated positive outcomes for both the company and the ECFP team. For the company, the research staff gained a better understanding of the product’s rheological properties which helped them to improve their manufacturing process. This work led to the company filing a patent which is now granted in the UK and pending for the EU (WO2023198737A1). For ECFP, we were able to apply our expertise in rheological measurements and theory to a real-world system which we had not studied before. Furthermore, the whole team was able to further develop their rheology expertise and capabilities, especially in extensional rheology.
Andreia is currently a Royal Society Industry Fellow, through which she has established a new collaboration with Hyaltech. Her fellowship focuses on establishing a solid scientific foundation to understand how fluid properties influence spreading capacity and removal through suction, in order to advance formulation design and facilitate product innovation.
A key take home from the day was the importance of communicating your research appropriately to different audiences. The keynote speaker, Fran Scott, delivered a fantastic talk to highlight this; finding a common language is important and acknowledging being flexible with your language.
Science communication can happen between various parties, Andreia’s talk focussed on the communication between academia and industry. However, other forms via outreach and public engagement are also immensely important. This was demonstrated when a live recording session for a podcast formed part of Graham Bruce and George Dwapanyin’s talk.
Andreia also took part in a Q&A session whereby she shared importance of finding the right mentor or advisor to help her understand her collaborator’s perspective; if you have access to a colleague who has worked in industry before, then reach out to them so that you can understand better the environment and priorities that may be different for them compared to an academic environment. These factors help a lot to facilitate a strong collaborative relationship.
The ECFP team have a track record for EPSRC IAA projects, with several past projects under our belt including:
-Secondment with Tioga Research
-Partnership Development and Collaborative Research with Mondelez International
-Collaborative Research with Aqualution Systems
-Collaborative Research with Corning
-Collaborative Research with Solvay
-Commercialisation Project of DAINTech
Contact us to find out more about these projects or to scope a potential joint application for an upcoming EPSRC IAA call.
Please get in contact with us to find out more about ECFP and whether we can help you.
