Borealis has announced the winners of its 2024 scientific innovation award. The competition rewards innovation in the field of production, design and sustainability of plastic materials.
This year the topic focused on new solutions for the sustainable production and use of plastics. The award recognises peer-reviewed publications or theses (publication paper, Bachelor, Master, PhD, Postdoc) that describe an innovative idea within the focus area. These ideas can include solutions for new catalysts, energy-efficient polymerisation processes, recycling of polymers, and polymeric materials for energy transformation.
Winners of the 2024 Borealis Scientific Innovation Award 2024
First place: Clement Collins Rice (University of Oxford, UK) “Towards designer polyolefins: highly tuneable olefin copolymerisation using a single permethyl-indenyl post-metallocene Catalyst”
Second place: Elisabetta Carrieri (Ghent University, Belgium) “Development of a solvent based recycling process for agricultural film”
Third place: Esun Selvam (University of Delaware, USA) “Recycling polyolefin plastic waste at short contact times via rapid joule heating”
In addition to receiving monetary prizes, the winners were invited to the Borealis Innovation Headquarters in Linz, Austria, where they participated in the award ceremony during the Borealis Innovation Day 2024.
The awards were launched in 2023 to stimulate the fresh thinking and innovative solutions needed to bring about a sustainable transformation. The next call for applications will start in spring 2025.