Adriana comes from Puebla City in Central Mexico, a city famous for being the birth place of the father of the singer Joan Baez. Albert Baez was himself a physicist of some renoun. Adriana studied in Puebla City for a Bachelor's degree in Nanotechnology and Molecular Engineering at the Universidad de las Americas Puebla, which sounds very glamorous, but it probably isn't. Adriana left with a summa cum lauda and a scholarship (courtesy of the lovely people at CONACyT) to Sheffield, which doesn't sound very glamorous and isn't. But their MSc in Polymer Composites Science and Engineering makes up in quality for what it lacks in glamour. Adriana graced this course with distinction, and consequently left with one. Adriana then started a PhD there, but left with her supervisor to the Queen's University in Belfast. In September 2021, having just been awarded her PhD, Adriana started her postdoc (funded by the nice people at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) with Katarina Novakovic and me at Heathrow Airport. Katarina and I were not at the airport, but poor Adriana had flown from Mexico, and straight into quarantine. We won't miss COVID. Anyway, ten days later, at the start of October, Adriana arrived in Newcastle. Her challenge, and she was given two years to do it, was to make a reversible adhesive that was water-based, cheap, could be applied easily by the end user, could be stored in ambient conditions, and could be made on an industrial scale. It took her three months. The patent has been filed and the paper published. Adriana is also quite the designer. Just look at her lush videos, where you can also see the link to the article.
Publications
A. Sierra-Romero, K. Novakovich, and M. Geoghegan "A reversible water-based electrostatic adhesive" Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 63 e202310750 (2024)
A. Sierra-Romero, K. Novakovich, and M. Geoghegan "Adhesive interfaces toward a zero-waste industry" Langmuir 38 15476-93 (2022)
Oral presentations:
European Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, Warsaw, Poland, September 2023