Speaker

Dr. Marina Fernando

Marina Fernando obtained her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine in 1987. She has pursued a R&D career and has gained experience in diverse applications of the polymer industry in the UK. She is currently the Head of the Industrial Support Unit at the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre in the UK. Her core competencies involve, adhesion, flame retardant rubber materials, compound development, flow and cure simulation of rubber during processing, product development, industrial troubleshooting, rubber to metal bonding and formation and technical direction of supply chain for product manufacture. She has led a number of research projects in the areas of adhesion, speciality natural rubbers and more recently the development of fire retardant rubbers. Her industrially based research has over 140 citations and she is the co-author of three book chapters and has published a number of papers in peer reviewed journals. Her main achievements are the development of the “inverted blister test”, which made it possible to measure the adhesion of thin brittle films to polymer substrates and more recently her work on Natural-FR which has been commercialised and is currently used in entrance matting in “Transport for London”, stations. She has reviewed papers for the “Journal of Rubber Research”, “Polymer Degradation and Stability” and “Plastics, Rubber and Composites”. In recognition of her efforts for the polymer industry, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (UK) made her a fellow of the Institute in August 2016.