On September 29th, 2025, Ana Trajcheva successfully defended her PhD thesis, "Novel Strategies to Eliminate Residual Monomers in Acrylic Waterborne Polymer Dispersions," in the Faculty of Chemistry.

Supervised by Prof. Radmila Tomovska, Ana’s research addresses one of the key challenges in the field of waterborne polymer coatings — the presence of residual monomers that can affect both the performance and safety of the final materials. Her work proposes innovative approaches to significantly reduce or eliminate these monomers, contributing to the development of safer, more sustainable, and high-performance waterborne polymer dispersions.

Her thesis defense was evaluated by a distinguished committee composed of Prof. Nicholas Ballard (POLYMAT) as President, Dr. Felipe Alarcia Hernanz (ProCOat Tecnologías, S.L.) as Secretary, and Prof. Stamatina Vouyiouka (National Technical University of Athens) as Member.

POLYMAT congratulates Dr. Trajcheva for her outstanding research and valuable contributions to the advancement of polymer science and sustainable materials technology.