Dr Paul Prentice he/him

Bubbles. I’ve been researching bubble activity in liquids under ultrasound exposure (aka acoustic cavitation), for more than 20 years, now. These bubbles reach thousands of degrees centigrade when they contract to collapse, form jets of liquid moving at more than a 100 m/s, generate flashes of light and high-pressure shock waves, and can etch through metal.

My group, CavLab, use ultra high-speed imaging to understand, control and manipulate bubble activity (our lab-motto is ‘seeing is believing’). We build ultrasonic transducers and reactor systems to exploit bubbles across a range of applications, motivated by sustainability and circularity.

A particular focus recently and for the foreseeable, is fabricating transducers capable of high throughput, flow-based sonochemistry and sonoprocessing. We’re keen to extend and explore new applications such as electronic waste recycling, large-scale graphene production, nitrogen fixation for fertilizer manufacture and wastewater treatment. Any application within a liquid phase, that would benefit from speeding up of a reaction, agitation to enhance or accelerate a process – ultrasonic bubbles could be the answer…

I’ve graduated 5 PhD students as primary supervisor. Three have remained in academia, currently as postdoctoral researchers or with lectureships, the other two went into industry.

I was academic lead for a recruitment team on the FUSE (the Future of Ultrasonic Engineering) CDT. I’m ridiculously proud that we managed to recruit a near 50:50 split in gender, with representation from LGBTQ+ communities and disadvantaged backgrounds. This opened my eyes to what can be done, but we need to get to a place where that is not unusual.

Outside of work, I’m basically a family man. I like hanging out with my son and doing DIY around the house (when it works out, anyway). A bit of running and cycling give me some balance.