Professor Derek Irvine
Derek Irvine is a member of the Microwave Process Engineering research group.DJI held various research positions within ICI from 1990 – 2006, when he was appointed as an Associate Professor within the DICE initiative at the University of Nottingham, a joint appointment between the Schools of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. In ICI, DJI established and led strong multidisciplinary teams with their research principally focused upon the application of novel polymer synthesis, catalysis and processing. His work in developing differentiated and commercially viable new products and processes has generated 38 refereed journal publications, 20 patent applications and the commercial launch of 10 products. DJI has had intimate experience of the difficulties of scale up of CRP while in industry and has a track record in overcoming these problems. Examples of commercialisation from DJI’s project and scientific leadership were the launch of ICI’s only products based on CRP, Lucite SWESTM and Lucite GRATM. These projects improved the application performance of key products within the constraints of market sector economics and available reactor configurations and resulted in three patent filings. Lucite SWESTM realises approximately 15 million GBP in sales revenue per annum. He has received ICI Awards for Innovation (1998, 2002 and 2003), was the winner of the ICI Sustainability Award (2002) and was appointed to the ICI Scientific Ladder in 2001.
