Dr Fernando Vidal Pena is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow (2021) in the group of Professor Charlotte Williams and the leading postdoctoral researcher in Chemistry for the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Plastics.

Fernando is a Fulbright Scholar (2012) and a Newton International Fellow of the Royal Society (2020). He pursued his PhD in polymer chemistry at Colorado State University under the supervision of Prof. Eugene Y.-X. Chen. After graduating in 2017, he joined the group of Prof. Frieder Jäkle as a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University-Newark. Concurrently to his research in borane-functionalized polymers for supramolecular and catalytic applications, he acted as laboratory coordinator for the PolyRUN, a state-of-the-art facility for the physical characterization of soft materials. His current research focuses on broadening the scope of CO2 copolymerisation to make sustainable polymers with improved mechanical properties, while he aims to implement new routes of chemical degradation and depolymerisation.