The International Academy of Wood Science (IAWS) recently announced that Dr. Adefemi Alade obtained the first position in their Doctoral Award for 2022. With this award the IAWS wishes to provide recognition to outstanding dissertation research at the PhD level by students throughout the world. Adefemi was supervised by Proff. Brand Wessels and Luvuyo Tyhoda from the Department of Forest and Wood Science, Stellenbosch University. The title of Adefemi’s dissertation was “An investigation into the effect of durability treatment on adhesive bonding of Eucalyptus grandis wood”. 

The use of new engineered wood products such as cross-laminated-timber (CLT) has increased exponentially in the developed world over the last few years. Despite the massive growth, the adoption of these materials as building elements proved to be a problem in some parts of the world where wood bio-deterioration is a concern.  CLT members cannot be treated after production due to dimensional constraints of treatment facilities. Treatment of lamellas before gluing is the most effective method, but it induces some technical problems related to adhesion in the glue-line. Adefemi’s research investigated potential treatment options and adhesive systems that can be used to manufacture durable CLT components from Eucalyptus grandis. The study established satisfactory greener process pathways that could be readily adopted industrially. The results of this study were accepted for publication as (?seven peer-reviewed papers?) in various scientific journals.

More information on Adefemi’s thesis can be found on the IAWS website (https://www.iaws-web.org/downloads/Bulletin-2022_2.pdf). Second and third places in the IAWS awards were given to Drs. Lu Yu (University of Tennessee, USA) and Ondrej Dvoracek (Graz University of Technology, Austria), respectively. Dr Alade has since taken up a position as Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Idaho in the USA.

Source: University of Stellenbosch