1. Board membership

No changes since 2006 (15 including the board administrator/industry co-ordinator Dr Matthew Thornton). Stuart Patrick took over as Chair from Dr Andrew Tinker at the start of the year.

Member details are as listed on the website under Contacts.

However we have a particular objective for 2008 to review board membership and bring more in line with the current status of the UK sector.

2. Board meetings

31st January in 1CHT, 7th June in Doncaster and

17th October in QMUL.

The Board also recognises the excellent support received from Dr Thornton since joining.

3. Opportunities for growth of Division Community or constraints

Growth strategy has focussed on establishing the rebranding of the Plastics and Rubber Division as the Polymer Society, a division of etc

This was finally agreed by Council in November. A logo has also been designed and agreed.

The new micro website will also be a key feature when it becomes operational in April 2008.

Membership will also make contact with SPE (Society of Plastics Engineers - approx 2000 members in Europe) to establish common grounds for improved links.

Action is still ongoing on the formation of a Polymer Science Group in cooperation with the IOP – Polymer Physics Group.

4. Technical programme

The Rubber in Engineering Committee (RIEC) continues to organise successful afternoon discussion meetings (ATDM) at 1CHT. A one day conference is also planned for 2008.

The PVC Committee has been focussing on PVC 2008 in Brighton in April and aims to repeat the success of previous conferences in terms of positive delegate feedback and profitability.

The Polymer Processing and Engineering Committee held their successful bi-annual conference for presentation & discussion of key developments in engineering excellence in polymer processing at the University of Bradford.

Full details of the technical programme are in Appendix A.

5. Foresight / Innovation and Growth

Start up links made with the Materials KTN node, Polymer Innovation Network (PIN) – formally Faraday Plastics - at Board level through Dr Tinker and Matthew Thornton, our Board administrator who is also part of Materials KTN and PIN. The Board, through Dr Tinker, also oversees the assessment of research funding requests to PIN.

These links will be developed on a more strategic basis in 2008.

PPEC was involved with PIN in the ‘In Process Measurement in Polymer Processing’ Road Mapping exercise carried out in Bradford in October and RIEC assisted PIN in organising an Elastomers Technology Road Mapping event in November.

6. Professional membership developments

The Board has a specific aim in maintaining links with the local societies that still focus on Polymers/Plastics and Rubber. Input into our Board meetings is encouraged and meeting minutes are generally distributed.

Apart from ensuring that relevant conferences are PD approved, we have no further PD activities.

7. National and international linkages with other Societies /Institutes

The Board already has a member based in South Africa so reasonable links exist in this area.

There are no formal links yet with other international or any national professional organisations but various options are being explored.

8. Government interfaces

No additional links

9. Publications

Website

The format for the new micro-site has been discussed and agreed in principle with the Web Content manager.

An extensive update to the current website covering the home page, polymer links and training and education has taken place in preparation for the switch over.

Plastics Rubber & Composites: Macromolecular Engineering

An excellent team of Editors/Publisher/Admin & Production which is progressing well with a web-based submission/review process in place.

Special editions are vital – a landmark is the Sichuan University special edition (14 papers, 100pp) about to appear in print (believed to be the first international journal special edition in English, from a Chinese institution)

Growing international contributions (always has had a good spread) and awareness but the macromolecular emphasis is slow to develop

We have made significant progress in quality increase and the overall journal operation. The impact is rising slowly – this will develop, given the increasing range of high quality authors.

Materials World

The Board has an active policy to seek out or generate suitable articles for Materials World and this was reasonably successful in 2007.

This policy will continue in 2008.

10. Awards/prizes

All eligible awards were made in 2007.

Colwyn Medal was awarded to Dr K Fuller due to his significant work on rubber bearings for vibration isolation and earthquake protection.

Alan Glanvill Award made to A Polynkin, J F T Pittman and J Sienz, University of Wales, Swansea, for their paper ‘Industrial applications of gas assisted injection moulding: numerical prediction and experimental trials’ in Plastics, Rubber and Composites, June 2005,Vol 34 no 5/6 pp236-246.

James S Walker Award for a published paper or an unpublished project report by a student on the subject of polymers.

Awarded to Ms A Dawson of London Metropolitan University for the project report ‘The Measurement of the Thermal Conductivity of Amorphous Polymers above Glass Transition Temperature’, and J J Dai for the paper ‘Experimental studies on fracture of unidirectional glass- fibre-reinforced plastics composites with V-notch’, Plastics, Rubber and Composites, February 2006,Vol 35 no 1, pp8-14.

Due to the difficulties of evaluating project reports in comparison to published papers, it was agreed that, in future, project reports should be summarised prior to submission for this award.

11. Other matters

Polymer education and training issues are a regular feature of the Board’s agenda and some time has been spent in collating polymer specific courses (of there are very few) and materials courses with polymer content offered by Universities and Colleges.

The next stage will be to actively promote accreditation of existing courses and identify gaps.

Colleges and companies which offer Short courses are also being collated and promoted to raise their profile.