François HALLAC

This October was organised the last research event of the Centre for Doctoral Training program (CDT CP3) within which I have undertaken my PhD. It was the final moment where I could see all my former colleagues and supervisors reunited for a 3-days conference.

It felt great to catch up with the people from the CDT and discover what career path they have taken after their doctorate. From petrolium to pharmaceutical industry, sponsors of the different PhD projects were present and it was exciting to see my former colleagues from AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

All the projects of the remaining PhD students were presented with a wide variety of subjects such as molecular dynamics, solar energy harvesting or model predictive control. I particularly enjoy these broad research conferences as they allow to discover projects outside of my domain of expertise and please my scientific curiosity. The 3 days in Scarborough were also garnished with workshops where we could reflect on our experience within the CDT and give feedback for the potential future CDT programs at the University of Leeds.

As a CDT alumni, I had the opportunity to present one of my research projects at King’s College London (KCL) on the flow synthesis and precipitation of paracetamol in amorphous form, sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Redistributed Manufacturing in Healthcare Network (RiHN). The development of novel continuous flow reactors and processes for this project deepens my expertise in this technology and facilitates its application to my other research project at KCL on RNA vaccines production, supervised by Prof. Harris Makatsoris and Prof. Christopher Frampton in partnership with Centillion Technologies.

I’d like to address a warm thank you to Dr. Anoushka Kulikowski who organised this event, allowing me to have a hearty catch-up with one of my former PhD surpervisors Prof. Frans Muller.