From Waste to Value: AI-Enabled Circular Systems for Sustainable Materials

IAS Residential Fellow Professor Anthony Halog delivers a seminar on their research -

This seminar explores how artificial intelligence, digital twins and systems thinking can help convert waste streams into high-value sustainable materials, including bioplastics. Drawing on collaborative research at Loughborough University, it will present an integrated framework that links process modelling with life cycle sustainability assessment to test environmental, economic and social trade-offs before real-world implementation. The seminar will examine how data-driven optimisation can improve feedstock selection, production efficiency, material performance and circularity while identifying rebound effects, uncertainty and scale-up barriers. Examples from food packaging and sustainable manufacturing will illustrate the opportunities and limitations of AI-enabled circular systems. Designed for an interdisciplinary audience, the presentation will conclude with a research agenda for connecting engineering, data science, business models and policy to accelerate responsible waste-to-value innovation and support net-zero industrial transitions.

Arrivals from 11:45 am for a 12:00 noon start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1:00pm.

International House can be found here on the campus map.

If these in-person tickets have sold out, you can still join online by registering for the Teams webinar.