{"id":2153,"date":"2013-09-20T11:29:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T10:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2013-09-20T11:41:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T10:41:24","slug":"thermolastics-wins-action-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/thermolastics-wins-action-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Thermolastics wins ACTION 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kate Clark is a PhD student in ICaMB<\/a> who recently won first prize as part of the Thermolastics team<\/a> at ACTION 2013<\/a>. \u00a0Here she tells us what it was all about and how she found the experience<\/em><\/p>\n

By Kate Clark<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a PhD student in David Lydall<\/a>\u2019s lab, and I was part of the ThermoLastics<\/a> team that recently won ACTION 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ACTION is an annual, EPSRC<\/a>-funded, 6 month programme open to both postgraduate students and research staff (http:\/\/research.ncl.ac.uk\/action2013\/<\/a>).\u00a0 The aim of ACTION is to generate ideas from the Newcastle University research community to tackle societal challenges<\/a> in the North East. This year, there were three societal challenge themes: sustainability, social renewal and changing age<\/a>.\u00a0 Participants were asked to create a social enterprise that addressed one or more of the challenge themes.\u00a0 The programme started with a two-day residential, where teams were formed and business ideas were generated.\u00a0 This was followed by a series of 1-day training labs, which introduced teams to key aspects of developing a business.<\/p>\n

I formed a team<\/a> with three engineering PhD students \u2013 Thomas Bohl, Eesha Raut and Amy Green.\u00a0 Eesha and Amy are chemical engineers, partly working for companies during their PhDs, and Thomas works on developing sustainable fuels.\u00a0 My research background is yeast genetics, which is quite different to that of my team members!\u00a0 However, one of the best aspects about ACTION is that inter-disciplinary collaboration is encouraged and we soon found that we had a number of similar business ideas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The initial two-day residential meeting for ACTION2013 was held during a cold snap in March, so we started looking at a socio-economic measure called fuel poverty, which is where households spend 10% or more of their income on heating their homes adequately. We did a little more research and found that nearly 25% of households in the North East <\/a>are in fuel poverty \u2013 the second highest rate in England.\u00a0 We decided to build a social enterprise around reducing fuel poverty, and believed that the best way to do this would be to offer cheap home insulation that was suitable for any home.\u00a0 The North East has very old housing stock, most of which does not have cavity walls, so we wanted to develop internal insulation for solid walls.\u00a0 Also, we wanted our product to be sustainable so we experimented with using finely shredded household plastic as the insulation material \u2013 currently only around 50% of household plastic waste is recycled.\u00a0 At this point we decided on our name, ThermoLastics<\/a> \u2013 Thermo for warmth, and Lastics for making plastics last for longer!<\/p>\n

Our first prototype product was a plasterboard panel filled with finely shredded plastic from household plastic waste.\u00a0 The panel is fitted to the internal wall of the home.\u00a0 Our second prototype used a 3D-printed<\/a> plastic matrix that can be filled with shredded plastic insulation.\u00a0 Currently, we are investigating ways to maximize the insulation potential of plastic waste, such as using finely milled plastic to form fibres.\u00a0 To find out more, visit\u00a0http:\/\/www.thermolastics.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall, we hoped that our business would address all three of the societal challenges<\/a>: sustainability<\/a> (through using recycled plastic), social renewal<\/a> (by reducing expenditure on fuel bills, which might help families to lead more active, social lives) and changing age <\/a>(because 50% of those in fuel poverty are over 60).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Thermolastics team, Amy Green, Thomas Bohl, Eesha Raut and Kate Clark being presented with their award by Dr Bryn Jones, the Newcastle University Dean of Postgraduate Studies<\/p><\/div>\n

ACTION 2013 culminated in a one-day showcase event at the Great North Museum<\/a>, which was part of the British Science Festival 2013<\/a>.\u00a0 Teams first pitched their ideas to a panel of judges, who were business experts from the North East.\u00a0 Then, teams opened their trade stands, displaying their business ideas, to judges and the public. We were delighted to be declared the ACTION 2013 winners, as decided by the expert judges, and were thrilled to be awarded the People\u2019s Choice Award too \u2013 decided by votes from members of the public.\u00a0 The prize awarded by the judges is \u00a32,000 per team member to put towards developing the business further, or developing ourselves as entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

Prior to ACTION 2013, I had no business experience but by the end of the programme, I had helped design and develop a product, produce a business plan, pitch the business and run a trade stand – so I have learned a great deal.\u00a0 The ThermoLastics team has decided to stay together and explore ways in which we can fund research and development for our product.\u00a0 Perhaps we will even bring it to market in the future – watch this space!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Links<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Action 2013: http:\/\/research.ncl.ac.uk\/action2013\/<\/a>
\nThermolastics:\u00a0http:\/\/www.thermolastics.co.uk\/<\/a>
\nThe Lydall Lab:\u00a0http:\/\/research.ncl.ac.uk\/lydallab\/Welcome.html<\/a>
\nNewcastle University Societal Challenges:\u00a0http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/about\/values\/societal\/<\/a>
\nBritish Science Festival 2013:\u00a0http:\/\/www.britishscienceassociation.org\/british-science-festival<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kate Clark is a PhD student in ICaMB who recently won first prize as part of the Thermolastics team at ACTION 2013. \u00a0Here she tells us what it was all about and how she found the experience By Kate Clark … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1713,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[71,70,72,73,60,37,69],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-action-2013","tag-awards","tag-bsf-2013","tag-cross-disciplinary","tag-icamb-2","tag-phd-students","tag-prizes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/icamblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}