Professor Dipa Roy
Professor and Chair in Sustainable Materials at the University of Edinburgh
Engineering
Dipa Roy sees value where others might see waste. Well before circularity and sustainability became research priorities, she was working with recycled materials, determined that materials labelledas “waste” still had an important role to play.
For Dipa, the success of recycling depends on what happens next. With the view that anything recycled need a purpose, her research focuses on creating new materials from discarded plastics and composite waste, or waste formed of two or more ingredients. By combining things that would otherwise be thrown away, including plastic packaging and industrial waste, she develops new materials that could be used in products and infrastructure such as flood barriers, building supplies and temporary shelters, giving these materials a valuable second life.
Dipa believes that we need to think about tomorrow’s problems today and this is threaded through her research. Whether it is wind turbine blades or advanced composite materials, she seeks to anticipate future waste challenges before they become environmental problems.
For Dipa, sustainability is about creating a future where materials never become waste. Challenging the idea that plastics are inherently bad, she argues that the real problem is not the material itself, but how we use, recover and reuse it. Through her research, she invites us to look beyond what we throw away and see the value, opportunity and potential still waiting to be unlocked.
