Dr. Maja Kuzmanović is an associate professor at the College of Polymer Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, China. She achieved her academic degree in Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Serbia in 2012. At the same faculty, in 2013, she obtained her first master’s degree in Materials Engineering. After that, prof. dr. Kuzmanović received a scholarship to study for her second master at the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, where her field of study was focused on biopolymer-based nanoparticles. In January 2015, she joined Ghent University where she did her PhD and worked as a Teaching Assistant. She obtained her PhD in materials engineering at the Centre of Polymer and Material Technologies (CPMT) at Ghent University within the field of microfibrillar composites with a focus on the relationship between processing, structure, and properties. During her PhD journey, she was granted to attend the immersion program at the State Key Laboratory, at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. Furthermore, she spent six weeks at University Minho, in Portugal as a visiting scientist, specializing in polarised optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy.
Her areas of expertise are (1) fundamentals in polymer processing; (2) synthesis of QDots, and (3) processing-structure-property relationships in polymer composites.
The research was mainly focused on the development of the polymer-based composite materials from polyolefins and polyesters, particularly in situ fibre-reinforced composites, and study on the relationship between processing, structure and properties of the composites. Besides the main research line, scientific interest was also directed towards the study of novel strategies for the recovery and valorisation of recycled materials with application in the food packaging industry, as well as the development of biopolymer-based nanoparticles for biomedical imaging. Research results have been the subject several communications to international conferences, and 10 published papers on international peer-reviewed journals, out of which one is published in the prestigious journal Advanced Materials (IF 30,849). Her research has been cited for more than 150 times.
LIST OF ARTICLES
1. Mehrdad Abbas-Abadi, Azd Zayoud, Marvin Kusenberg, Martijn Roosen, Florence Vermeire, Parviz Yazdani, Jonathan, Van Waeyenberg, Andreas Eschenbacher, Francisco Jose Arraez Hernandez, Maja Kuzmanović, Hang Dao Thi, Uros Kresovic, Bert Sels, Peter Van Puyvelde, Steven De Meester, Mark Saeys, Kevin Van Geem. Thermochemical recycling of end-of-life and virgin HDPE: A pilot-scale study, Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis 2022, 166, p.105614, DOI: 10.1016/j.jaap.2022.105614
2. Aleksandar Bojković, Florence Vermeire, Maja Kuzmanović, Hang Dao Thi, Kevin Van Geem. Analytics driving kinetics: advanced mass spectrometric characterization of fuels and products, Energy & Fuels, 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acs.energyfuels.1c02355
3. Maja Kuzmanović, Laurens Delva, Ludwig Cardon, Kim Ragaert. The Feasibility of Using the MFC Concept to Upcycle Mixed Recycled Plastics, Sustainability 2021, 13, 689. DOI: 10.3390/su13020689
4. Maja Kuzmanović, Laurens Delva, Ludwig Cardon, Kim Ragaert. A Review: Relationship Between the Processing, Structure and Properties of Microfibrillar Composites, Advanced Materials 2020, 2003938, DOI: 10.1002/adma.202003938
5. Maja Kuzmanović, Laurens Delva, Yixin Jiang, Ludwig Cardon, Jie Zhang, Kim Ragaert. Effects of Phase Morphology on Mechanical Properties: Oriented/Unoriented PP Crystal Combination with Spherical/Microfibrillar PET Phase, Dashan Mi, Yingxiong Wang, Polymers 2019, 11(2):248, DOI: 10.3390/polym11020248
6. Maja Kuzmanović, Laurens Delva, Dashan Mi, Carla Isabel Martins, Ludwig Cardon, Kim Ragaert. Development of Crystalline Morphology and Its Relationship with Mechanical Properties of PP/PET Microfibrillar Composites Containing POE and POE-g-MA, Polymers 2018, 10(3), 291, DOI: 10.3390/polym10030291
7. Maja Kuzmanović, Dušan K. Božanić, Dušan Milivojević, Dragana Mitić-Ćulafić, Slaviša Stanković, Carmen Ballesteros, Javier Gonzalez-Benito. Sodium-Alginate Biopolymer as a Template for the Synthesis of Nontoxic Red Emitting Mn2+-Doped CdS Nanoparticles, RSC Advances, 2017, 7, 53422–53432. DOI: 10.1039/c7ra11011a
8. Maja Kuzmanović, Laurens Delva, Ludwig Cardon, Kim Ragaert. The Effect of Injection Molding Temperature on the Morphology and Mechanical Properties of PP/PET Blends and Microfibrillar Composites, Polymers 2016, 8(10), 355; DOI:10.3390/polym8100355
9. Kim Ragaert, Lauren Delva, Nicolas Van Damme, Maja Kuzmanović, Sara Hubo, Ludwig Cardon. A Review: Microstructural Foundations of the Strength and Resilience of LLDPE Artificial Turf Yarn, Journal of Applied Polymer Science 2016, DOI: 10.1002/app.44080
10. Freddy A. Sanchez, Marta Redondo, Dania Olmos, Maja Kuzmanović, Javier Gonzalez-Benito. A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study on Thermal Transitions of PMMA and PMMA/SiO2 Nanocomposites. Macromolecular Symposia 2014, 339(1). DOI: 10.1002/masy.201300137
