SMaRT researcher joins new prestigious Circularity journal

UNSW SMaRT Centre Researcher Dr Rumana Hossain has joined the Editorial Board of the new Cambridge University Press journal, Cambridge Materials Circularity, as Associate Editor.

She joins UNSW SMaRT Centre Director, Professor Veena Sahajwalla, who is the inaugural Editor in Chief of the new journal, one of four new Cambridge Materials journals recently launched as open access journals to accelerate progress on UN Sustainable Development Goals by connecting materials science with policy, innovation, and societal impact.

Announcement of Veena's appointment and Q&A

From the CUP blog post announcement:

Cambridge Materials: What originally drew you to materials research, and what continues to excite you about the field?

Rumana Hossain: I was drawn to materials research because it’s one of the few fields where you can connect fundamental structure–property relationships to outcomes that society can feel—cleaner energy, safer products, and more resilient supply chains. What continues to excite me is that materials science doesn’t stop at “inventing something new”; it also lets us rethink what we already have. In circularity, that often means treating end-of-life products not as waste, but as engineered feedstocks with embedded value—and designing processes that can recover that value in forms that are truly usable again.

CM: What are the main scientific questions or application-driven challenges currently motivating your research?

RH: A central challenge is how to recover high-quality materials from real, heterogeneous streams—especially where products were never designed to come apart easily. This is visible in the complex waste streams such as batteries and electronics: globally, e-waste reached about 62 million tonnes in 2022, yet only 22.3% was documented as formally collected and recycled. In practice, that translates into scientific questions around selective separation, process control with mixed feedstocks, and how to maintain material integrity so recovered outputs can go back into manufacturing rather than becoming lower-value by-products. I’m also motivated by the “deployment question”: what process designs can scale safely and economically, including in settings where centralized infrastructure or long-distance transport is not ideal?

CM: Are there any recent breakthroughs in materials science (from your work or the wider community) that you find particularly exciting, or have enjoyed reading about?

RH: I’ve been excited by progress in two areas. The first is direct regeneration/direct recycling of battery, e-waste, complex multilayered packaging waste and other consumer waste materials —approaches that aim to preserve or restore the property and quality of materials rather than breaking everything down or incinerated, which could shorten process pathways if quality standards and validation mature. The second is decentralized distributed fit for purpose manufacturing, robotics and automation for disassembly, especially for e-waste, EV battery packs, etc. where safety and labour intensity can be major barriers; the field is developing a clearer view of what is technically feasible and what needs standardization in product design.

CM: What are you currently working on that you would like to share with the journal’s readership?

RH: I’m focused on translating circularity into practical systems that can recover value from complex waste streams while being realistic about safety, variability, and scaling. A theme in my work is modularity—developing process steps that can be deployed closer to where waste arises, and that can separate and upgrade material fractions so they become credible manufacturing inputs rather than “mixed residues.” This naturally connects materials processing with design and policy questions: the best recovery route often depends on how products were assembled, what information is available about composition, and what standards define “recovered material quality.” That intersection—materials science plus circular design, plus implementation—feels exactly where the Circularity community is heading.

CM: Which areas of materials research related to Circularity do you expect to see the most rapid growth over the next 10–20 years?

RH: I expect rapid growth in circularity approaches for electrification-enabling materials—battery materials, magnets, and high-value metals from electronics—because they sit at the intersection of supply risk and decarbonization. Recycling is increasingly recognized as indispensable to the security and sustainability of critical mineral supply for clean energy transitions. I also anticipate major advances in automation-enabled disassembly and sorting, and in data/traceability systems that support design for repair, reuse, and high-quality recycling. Policy frameworks are increasingly pushing in that upstream direction through ecodesign principles and product information requirements.

CM: What do you see as the key bottlenecks—scientific, technological, policy, or scaling-related—facing materials relevant to Circularity today?

RH: One bottleneck is the mismatch between the complexity of real products and the simplicity assumed by many lab-scale recycling demonstrations. Product variability, adhesives, coatings, and composite assemblies make selective separation and consistent output quality difficult. Disassembly is another bottleneck: it can be safety-critical and economically challenging, which is why robotics and design-for-automated-disassembly are receiving so much attention. On the policy side, collection systems and standards often lag behind technology, and without stable incentives and clear specifications for recovered materials, it’s hard to build investment-grade pathways. The direction of travel is positive—circularity is being linked more explicitly to supply security and climate objectives—but alignment between regulation, markets, and engineering still needs work.

CM: How do you see materials science contributing to a secure, sustainable, and low‑carbon future?

RH: Materials science contributes by expanding what is possible: higher performance with fewer constraints, and new pathways that reduce dependence on scarce or geopolitically concentrated resources. It also contributes by improving what is already deployed—through recovery and reuse—so that we reduce the need for new extraction and refining. That is why recycling is increasingly framed not only as an environmental strategy, but as a critical component of secure supply chains for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earths. Finally, materials science provides the measurement and verification tools—characterization, degradation science, and life-cycle thinking—that help society distinguish between “recycling in name” and circularity that is genuinely low-carbon and scalable.

CM: What attracted you to joining the Editorial team of Cambridge Materials: Circularity, and how do you hope to contribute to the journal’s development?

RH: I was attracted by the journal’s explicit mission to bridge materials innovation with real-world implications—environmental, societal, economic, and policy—and to do so in an open-access format that supports broad uptake and collaboration.  Circularity problems are inherently cross-disciplinary, so I value a venue that welcomes rigorous technical work alongside research that addresses design, implementation, and governance. As an Associate Editor, I hope to help build a community around solution-oriented scholarship: maintaining high standards for scientific quality and reproducibility, encouraging clarity about scale-up and impact, and supporting exciting emerging areas—especially where new materials processing routes connect directly to circular manufacturing and resource resilience.

Cambridge Materials: Circularity is an interdisciplinary journal combining materials science, social science, environmentally sustainable technologies, and policy studies, highlighting research on responsible production and re-manufacturing, climate resilience, and waste and recycling innovation.
The journal aligns with multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including:
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
SDG 13: Climate Action
SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Cambridge Materials: Circularity is part of Cambridge Materials, a suite of four journals, each focused on a particular global challenge – circularity, energy, health, water – and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The Cambridge Materials journals publish high-quality research that integrates innovations in materials science and engineering with environmental, life cycle, economic, social, and policy considerations, thereby bridging knowledge gaps and supporting impactful solutions.