User:Gwenael.bonnave/Agi Brandt-Talbot

Dr Agnieszka Brandt-Talbot is a German Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. Also known as Agi Brandt, she is leading the Sustainable Carbon Solutions research team focusing on creating biomaterials and chemicals from biomass, especially engineering low-cost renewable carbon fibres from lignin - one of the components of lignocellulosic biomass. Two years ago, she co-founded with Dr Florence Gschwend and Professor Jason Hallett Chrysalix Technologies Limited to commercialise a biomass fractionation process with ionic liquids to produce cellulose and lignin products. She is the Chief Scientific Officer of the start-up.

Early life and education
Dr Brandt-Talbot is born in Rostock, located in north-east Germany. In secondary school, her favourite subjects were chemistry and biology Thanks to family support and inspiring teachers, she started studying chemistry and biochemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. There, she received a BSc and an MSc.

Research and career
In 2007, Agi Brandt-Talbot joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London with a Porter Institute funded PhD scholarship. During her thesis, she developed novel processes using ionic liquids for woody biomass fractionation, also known as pretreatment or deconstruction. After her PhD, she was a postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She worked on the process intensification of the pretreatment process as well as characterisation and control of lignin properties. Amongst others, she supervised more than 20 PhD, Master and undergraduate students, managed the lab, taught tutorials in organic chemistry while continuing writing academic papers.

In 2017, she moved on to the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London when she was awarded an Imperial College Research Fellowship. The same year, she co-founded Chrysalix Technologies with Jason Hallett and Florence Gschwend. Beforehand, she was hired by another start-up, Econic Technologies, for her competences in working with patents and since she was fluent in both English and German. When she had the opportunity to further work on her original PhD project, she decided to return to academia. It was when she started her postdoc position, then she founded her own start-up.

At the head of the Sustainable Carbon Solutions research team, Agi Brandt-Talbot is now exploring new ways to develop sustainable materials. Her research group is particularly interested in producing at a low-cost high-strength carbon fibres from lignin, which is one of the components of lignocellulosic biomass. The team is also developing energy-efficient processes for recycling plastics, notably polyester plastics.

Personal life
Agi is married and mother of two boys. Her husband is really committed and supportive to her academic career, thus they split childcare commitments equally.

Awards
In 2015, Agnieszka Brandt-Talbot was awarded Imperial College's President's Award of Excellence for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.The following year, she received Sir William Wakeham Award from the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Publications
Agi Brandt-Talbot has authored more than 30 articles with more than 3,000 citations and co-holds license for 3 patents.

Lignocellulosic biomass fractionation

 * An economically viable ionic liquid for the fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass
 * Deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass with ionic liquids