IULTCS names winners of young leather scientist grants
12/02/2019
Catherine Ann Maidment, who works at the New Zealand Leather and Shoe Research Association in Palmerston North, has won the IULTCS research commission’s research grant of €1,500, which she will use for her work on the causes of loose and tight leathers. Specifically, she will correlate this structural-mechanical behaviour with the profiles of protein compositions of different processing states in the beamhouse, measured by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectroscopy.
In parallel, Shahruk Nur-A-Tomal, first educated at Kulna University of Engineering and Technology in Bangladesh and currently at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has won the programme’s €1,000 grant for sustainability and environmental protection. He will investigate the use of leather shavings and cuttings as a reducing agent in steel production. The treatment of these by-products of the leather industry is still a challenge and would close the last gap in the material cycles of the leather industry, IULTCS said on making the announcement.
Sharuk Nur-A-Tomal won the research grant in 2016; picking up the sustainability and environmental protection award this time is his second success in the young leather scientist programme.
On making the announcement, IULTCS thanked leather chemicals manufacturer TFL for its sponsorship of the sustainability and environmental protection grant; IULTCS itself is the sponsor of the main grant, won this year by Ms Maidment.
Chair of the IULTCS research commission, Dr Michael Meyer, said at the time of the announcement: “This year we received applications from 15 innovative research topics. The overall quality of the applications was at a high level and the decision was not easy.” The selection committee was supported by Thierry Poncet from French leather and footwear research organisation CTC, and by Dr Jeffry Guthrie-Strachan, product communication and promotion manager at leather chemicals manufacturer Trumpler.
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