Professor Dipa Roy, delivering impact

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“I had absolutely no intention of leaving Calcutta”, says Dipa Roy, who was born, raised and educated to PhD level in the busy Indian city. Dipa’s family all lived locally, and by her early thirties she was a Lecturer in the Department of Polymer Science and Technology at the University of Calcutta, a respected government institution that offered lifelong job security and built-in career progression. With such strong bonds to Calcutta a move seemed impossible, but a desire to push her research beyond the boundaries of academia and make a difference pulled Dipa out of her comfort zone and brought her across the world. Today, she is Reader in Composite Materials and Processing at the University of Edinburgh, where she leads multiple projects that innovate new applications for materials otherwise destined for landfill.

The determination to learn that compelled Dipa to make a huge life change and take her research in a new direction has been evident since she was a small child. Growing up, she would contend with a 90-minute train and bus journey each way to get to and from school every day. Dipa’s parents wanted to make sure that she got the best education possible, which meant travelling a long way to a very good school. The commute was draining, but Dipa loved to study, especially Chemistry.

After finishing her schooling, Dipa achieved a First Class Bachelor’s in Chemistry at university, before completing a BTech and an MTech in Polymer Science and Technology in quick succession. All these qualifications were earned at the University of Calcutta, so that Dipa could remain at home with her parents. Having interned for the company during her MTech, Dipa got a job as a Management Trainee at ICI Paints after graduation, however she soon realised that she missed the freedom of conducting her own research. Within a year, she had enrolled for a PhD at the prestigious Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, at Jadavpur University.

During her PhD she married her husband, who had been one of her MTech classmates, and she moved in with her new in-laws. By that time her husband had started working in a multinational company, he was very supportive of Dipa’s research ambitions, and this support was vital when Dipa gave birth to their daughter towards the end of her PhD studies. With a thesis to write, her husband and in-laws stepped in to look after the baby each day so that Dipa could push on with her thesis. “My in-laws were wonderful people,” she says, “They gave me all of the support I needed so I didn’t have to struggle.”

Dipa’s tight support network included PhD supervisor, Dr B.K. Sarkar, with whom she is still in touch. Dipa recalls taking her baby along to supervisory meetings as a new mother, and his nurturing encouragement has clearly informed her own supervisory style. Today, Dipa is a committed and thoughtful PhD supervisor who has a real fondness for her students. “I love them, they’re like my kids,” she says.

“I want my students to have a stress-free PhD experience like I did so I make sure, as far as I can control, that they aren’t put in any situations that cause them stress.”

During two years of research associateship at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Dipa was teaching part time at Dr M.N. Dastur School of Materials Science and Engineering, part of the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur. Professor N.R. Bandyopadhyay, Director of the School at that time, was very supportive in offering Dipa her first teaching role. After that Dipa took a job as a lecturer in the Department of Polymer Science and Technology at the University of Calcutta, and her academic career got off to a very productive start.

“I had a very strong passion for research and was super active at that point. I was young and had a lot of energy and enthusiasm, so I worked really hard and was quite successful.”

This is a typical understatement. Over six years, Dipa was PI on five Government of India projects, and shepherded eight PhD students through their studies. While the stability of a government job meant there was no pressure to excel, Dipa was driven by a love of both teaching and research.

With a young daughter to care for and a husband who was often away for work, for a few years it wasn’t practical for Dipa to do a postdoctoral fellowship. It was only when she began attending international conferences and seeing what her contemporaries were doing that she started to feel like a postdoc would be necessary to avoid her research stagnating.

Dipa started looking at opportunities, but she was reluctant to disrupt family life. “By that time my in-laws were getting older,” she says, “and living further away would have been problematic. But I applied for a few postdocs so I would have no regrets."

So casual was Dipa’s approach to applications that invitations for interview came as a shock. Her husband had to coax her into attending an online interview with the Irish Composites Centre (IComp) at the University of Limerick, he even booked the video conferencing suite for her so that she didn’t have an excuse to back out. Dipa impressed the panel and was offered the research fellowship, but the prospect of moving to Ireland, even for six months, was so daunting that she almost turned the job down. IComp were so sure that Dipa was the right candidate for the role that they offered to make all of the arrangements for her daughter to attend school in the area, so that mother and child could stay together. That settled the matter.

Dipa intended to stay at IComp for a year at most, but her daughter thrived in Ireland and was greatly enjoying her new school. Reconsidering their plans, Dipa remained at IComp and her husband soon got a job in Limerick, where the family stayed for over six years.

A major focus of IComp was undertaking projects that addressed industry problems, and Dipa’s fellowship under the mentorship of the Centre’s then-Director Dr Terry McGrail was her introduction to industry collaborations. So what did she learn?

“The most important thing is to get clarity on what it is the industry partner wants. Often they have objectives for five, ten years down the line, but their short- to medium-term objectives are less clear, which can make it difficult for the academic to deliver. So there has to be a defined requirement from the industry side, and regular, open communication between the partners.”

It's also vital for both parties to be willing to compromise, says Dipa, “because pure academic research may not satisfy the industry partner and industry-specific research may not satisfy the academic. There has to be a nice overlap of the two so that the academic is still getting their research outputs and the industry partner is getting an answer to their problem.”

Working with industry on solving real-world problems was fulfilling, but Dipa was ready for a return to academia and teaching when she saw a lectureship at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering advertised. Dipa loved being able to teach again, but building her industry collaborations back up at a new institution was a challenge. Her new colleagues and manager were supportive, and Edinburgh Innovations proved vital by identifying potential industry partners for Dipa, helping to secure project funding, supporting with patent applications, and taking the stress out of intellectual property and contract negotiations.

Dipa has now been at the University for over six years, and her commitment to delivering research that makes a positive impact on our world is stronger than ever. In 2021 she was named one of the Top 50 Women in Engineering by The Women’s Engineering Society for the contribution her work is making towards building a more sustainable future. She is busy with several sustainability projects, including an innovative solution for waste soft plastics that can be used by the construction industry, and for which a patent is pending. In another project, she and Professor Vasileios Koutsos have conceived a novel use for decommissioned wind turbine blades, which are made of fibre-reinforced, epoxy-based composites that are typically very expensive and difficult to recycle. With funding from industry partner Greencoat UK Wind, Dipa and Vasileios have been able to devise a method of turning the blades into powders that could be used in surface coatings to protect engineering and structural components from corrosion and erosion by the elements. Their novel technology is likely to be of considerable commercial and environmental importance, as the recycling of such composites is critical for reaching net zero targets. It is this throughline from research to impact that compelled Dipa to leave Calcutta and seek out new ways of applying her academic expertise.

“For me, research makes more sense when it can be exploited for some real-world benefit, and research can’t be translated into product development and societal benefit without industry involvement to carry it forward. That’s the path to real world impact.”