Silver Medal at STEM for Britain 2023 for Dylan Sherman

Trinity DPhil student Dylan Sherman won the Silver medal in the Chemistry category at the STEM for BRITAIN event.

He was awarded the medal for his poster presentation on creating a re-usable, cost-effective, and accurate local source water purity indicator for remote and developing communities. The event was hosted on 6 March on the Parliamentary estate and is a major scientific poster competition and exhibition organised by the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee and judged by professional and academic experts. It aims to recognise the outstanding science and engineering research being undertaken in UK universities by early-career researchers by giving them the opportunity to present their work directly to Members of Parliament (MPs).

Dylan is a third-year Dphil student in the Department of Engineering Science and was one of seven Oxford early-career researchers who were short-listed and one of three awarded a medal for their presentations. He said:‘With water quality challenges globally, there is a pressing need for easy to use, reliable water purity indicators for those that rely on local point water sources in remote communities. We’ve tackled this challenge by developing a portable cost-effective luminescent indicator that uses porous nano materials to identify hazardous organic solvent pollutants. Next, we are looking to integrate purification into the device - creating an all-in-one system for sensing and cleaning organic solvents in water samples.’  

Reflecting on the event, he says: ‘It was an electric atmosphere, stimulated by the nexus between politicians, industry, professional organisations and academics. Even better, the poster format meant the connection between sectors was real - easily enabling powerful one-to-one discussions with parliamentarians and professionals directly. Sharing my research with the broader community was an exciting challenge of simplification and relatability - distilling the work to what really matters for our society. Thank you to all involved for the opportunity!’