Professor Stefan Bon has been honoured by McMaster University with the prestigious Les Shemilt Lectureship for his achievements in chemical engineering.

The Department of Chemical Engineering at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) has awarded Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon, University of Warwick, the 2025/2026 Les Shemilt Lectureship. This prestigious Lectureship is an annual lecture series that highlights speakers who have made significant contributions in chemical engineering and is reserved for their most distinguished speakers. Professor Stefan Bon's work in developing functional and sustainable polymers for a wide variety of applications in chemical engineering makes a perfect fit for this series.

Professor Stefan Bon said:

"I am absolutely honoured to have been selected by McMaster University as the Les Shemilt Lecturer for the coming academic year. I am proud of all the work my research team, BonLab, has done over the years in the area of polymer and colloid chemical engineering. I am very much looking forward to the visit and meeting the people at the Department of Chemical Engineering at McMaster's".

About Les Shemilt

Leslie Shemilt (1919—2011) received his PhD from the University of Toronto, started his academic career at the University of British Columbia, was the founding Head of the University of New Brunswick’s Department of Chemical Engineering, served as Dean of Engineering at McMaster from 1969 to 1979, and was subsequently active at McMaster as an Emeritus Professor. Among many other contributions and achievements, Les was the editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering for seventeen years, and was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineers, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Mars Poxon and Emily Brogden clinch top honors at Warwick Chemistry postgraduate symposium

The Chemistry Department at the University of Warwick organizes a postgraduate symposium each year, where final year PhD researchers present their work with a talk, second year PhD researchers and MRes researchers present their work with a poster and where the winner of the Science, Engineering, and Medicine (SEM) Faculty for the best PhD thesis is announced.

At this year’s event, final-year PhD researcher Mars Poxon won a best PhD talk award for their work on degradable polymers (left image below). Mars showed two synthetic strategies for polymers produced by radical polymerization that can reduce their average molecular weight at end-of-life, thereby facilitating end-processing or environmental degradation.

Emily Brogden won the 2026 University of Warwick SEM faculty prize for best PhD thesis on innovative approaches to improve pressure-sensitive adhesive performance (right image above).

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon says: “I am incredibly proud of both Mars and Emily for their achievements, and their dedication and commitment to their scientific research and the team. These awards are a great recognition of the research we do and fantastic news for everybody who is part of BonLab.”

Liming Li wins best poster award at the SCI Rideal 2026 Symposium

On 8 April 2026, we travelled with 9 people from BonLab to the SCI headquarters in London to celebrate the achievements of Prof. Joe Keddie (The University of Surrey) at his Rideal award symposium. It was a memorable day full of fantastic polymer colloid science.

Liming Li, a 2nd-year PhD researcher from BonLab at the University of Warwick, won a best poster award for his work on predicting the glass transition and release kinetics of deep eutectic systems.

Prof. dr. ir. Stefan Bon said: “I am immensely proud that the scientific jury has selected Liming’s work to be given this prize. It gives him the recognition for all the hard work he has done in his PhD research and provides him with the motivation to excel. It is fantastic for the team!”