On 5th June 2025, we held Formative Formulation at Burlington House. This is our annual scientific event for early career researchers with four invited speakers.

Dr Denise Li kicked off the day by welcoming all the delegates and encouraging them to harness the power of networking and offering her advice on how to approach networking to make it less daunting for early career researchers.

Three of our invited speakers shared their career journeys thus far, discussing how they arrived at their current positions, highlighting key science case studies, and offering one piece of advice for the next generation of formulators. The first of our invited speaker talks was by Dr Kathryn Knight, who shared her journey from being a postdoctoral researcher to being a team leader at Croda. Kathryn shared a key driver to do something that you love and are passionate about. Dr TJ Mitchell described his journey from graduating from his PhD and finding a role that excited him which led to him embarking on an entrepreneurial journey of finding the right team and reducing our waste footprint with founding Arda Biomaterials. Dr Tiffany Wood shared how one can be involved with innovation whilst being an academic having co-founded Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership and Dyneval.

Throughout the day, delegates were able to book a 1-2-1 meeting with RSC careers advisor, Dr Robert Bowles, who finished off the day with his talk on practical advice on searching for jobs, writing CVs and cover letters and what the typical career track for a formulation scientist may be in academia and industry.

Our delegates were invited to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentations. These were judged by our invited speakers and organisers, and the following awards were presented by Denise and Vivian:

• Best Oral Presentation – Ke Sun
• Runner-up Oral Presentation – Lauren Matthews
• Best Poster Presentation – Alice Burberry
• Runner-up Poster Presentation – Musab Osman

Congratulations to our winners!

The event was co-organised by Drs Denise Li and Vivian Christogianni on behalf of the RSC FSTG.