BCI members have gone on to launch a number of start-up companies over the years, and the latest is MOLYDYN, which has been established by Matthew Bone from the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites Science, Engineering and Manufacturing (CoSEM CDT).
Molydyn is working to drive materials discovery with a new accessible approach to computational chemistry. Simulating polymers at the molecular level can help guide lab work, eliminating screening and accelerating the development of new sustainable materials. This leads to time saving, allowing researchers to use their effort more efficiently to discover other innovative solutions.
We asked Matthew about his experience of setting up his own company and what advice he would give to others, “For me, the toughest and most enjoyable part is getting out there and talking to people about what you do. It’s difficult as you’re asking people to judge something that is so personal to you, but the overwhelming majority of people are so kind, give fantastic feedback and wish you nothing but the best. My advice to people is take whatever idea you have and start getting people’s opinion on it. If you’re willing to change it, you’ll end up with something so much better than you could have achieved on your own.”
Molydyn is relevant now more than ever as the world needs new materials to enable more sustainable applications like:
- Hydrogen storage
- Carbon capture
- Green energy
It takes 10-20 years for a new material to come to market and long laboratory trials are a slow stage of the development cycle. As companies embrace Industry 4.0 they are realising that simulation can guide their scientists and save significant amounts of time, money, and physical waste.
The challenge is running these complex simulations and getting accurate data that means something to the people in the lab. Molydyn’s managed simulation platform can help companies screen new materials in days instead of weeks, for half the cost of a laboratory trial.
You can read more about Molydyn at www.molydyn.com