ECFP at the 6th annual SCI Formulation Forum event

On the 21st and 22nd January 2025, Drs Andreia Silva, David Crosby, Denise Li, Tiffany Wood and Daniel Hodgson from ECFP attended the annual SCI Formulation Forum.

31 January 2025

The Formulation Forum theme for this year was “Creative formulation for future challenges”. Speakers from academia and industry came together to share their research outputs, innovations as well as challenges, how to work with regulators and policy makers. The 2-Day event included a full program of varied talks with application areas spanning nanomedicine, batteries, concrete, agrochemicals and cosmetics. Application agnostic talks on AI modelling of surfactant behaviour and how to study the stability of gels also inspired new approaches to undersanding such systems.

Drs Andreia Silva and David Crosby presenting their posters including their 1 minute flash presentations

ECFP presented posters

ECFP attended with 2 poster presentations, 1 oral presentation and 1 nominee for the Formulation Award. The title of our posters were:

“Predicting sensorial properties of topical and hair formulations through rheology”
Dr Andreia Silva presented her poster on how rheological measurements can provide quantitative parameters for assessing the sensory properties such as runniness, spreadibility, smoothness and stickiness of different personal care formulations. This work also highlighted that the sensory criteria is dependent on the final product’s application purpose, e.g. as a moisturising cream for the hand, face or oil for the hair.

“Exploring the multifunctionality of a commercial microgel” – winner of the best poster prize
Dr David Crosby presented his poster on how to combine different physical characterisation methods such as rheology, tensiometry and cryo SEM to understand the behaviour and functionality of microgels.

Dr Tiffany Wood during her talk on DAINTech at SCI Formulation Forum 2025

Runner-up Prize for the Formulation Award

Our patented technology, DAINTech received the runner-up prize for the Formulation Award. In which Tiffany delivered a talk on the technology and how it has the potential to be a novel, platform technology for stable, liquid formulations.

On Day 2, Tiffany delivered a more detailed talk on how the technology works by combining nematic liquid crystals with dispersed particles or droplets to create deflect lines. Above a certain volume fraction of particles/droplets, there will be enough defect lines to create a gel throughout the whole system that exhibits superior stability, shear thinning and smooth coating properties. Her novel, patented technology was published in the journal, Science, in 2011, supported by experimental and computational results to gain a thorough understand on how to create the system as well as control its properties.

Tiffany was also asked to participate in the panel discussion which include grand questions such as “what do you think the biggest disrupters will be” and “how do we maintain UK being an attractive place to work for both industrial and academic roles”. The panel discussed to the role of data and the importance for standardisation as well as highlighting the importance of industrial and academic collaboration in order to meet sustainability and growth targets.

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