Professor Kim Ragaert has been appointed as the new Chair of Circular Plastics at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. In this new role, which she took up 20 September, her focus will be on the mechanical recycling of plastics.
Prof. Ragaert has a background in mechanical engineering and materials science. She has a deep knowledge of structure-property relationships in polymers, is an expert in the mechanical recycling of polymers and holds a PhD in plastics processing.
Prior to joining Maastricht University, she was an associate professor at Ghent University in the Sustainable Use and Recycling of Polymers. Specific research topics were the upcycling of mixed solid plastic waste, modelling of polymer degradation, Design for and from Recycling, micro-fibrillar composites, WEEE plastics and the recycling of multilayer packaging materials. As well, Ragaert chaired the Plastics to Resource pipeline within the CAPTURE interdisciplinary academic collaboration initiative.
While at Ghent, she also coordinated the C-PlaNeT (Circular Plastics Network for Training) project; funded by the European Union within the framework of the H2020 Marie Sk?odowska Curie Actions – Innovative Training Networks, C-PlaNeT is a consortium of high-profile universities, research institutions and companies located in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Denmark and Greece. The primary objective of C-PlaNeT is to demonstrate that a sustainable future for plastics is possible when all the different actors in the value chain collaborate, interact, challenge and complement each other.
A member of the HolyGrail2.0 digital watermarks project, Prof. Ragaert is also an associate editor for the international journal, Waste Management.
At the 2020 PRSE event, she was awarded the prestigious Plastics Recycling Ambassador Award, in recognition of her significant contribution to the advancement of plastics recycling in Europe.