Treading new ground with David O’Loughlin

The annual Lindau Meetings are held on an island in Lake Constance in south Germany, alternating through chemistry, physiology, medicine, and physics. Departments in the University were asked to nominate one PhD student and/or postdoc, who is then selected to join a pool of twenty put forward to the Lindau Nobel Committee by the Royal Society. David was notified by the Committee that he was on the list. 

“It’s really exciting to get unprecedented access to thirty-five recent Nobel Laureates,” says David. “It’s more exciting than a conference because I’m not presenting my project, it’s just about going and meeting and listening to them and having conversations. The application was interesting as well because they wanted to know more about what I was like as a researcher rather than what my research was – I’d not seen anyone approach it that way before.”

This is not the first international recognition for David, who was also the first non-US recipient of a Mary Amdur Student Award last year, given by the American Society of Toxicology (SOT). “The College sponsored my travel, so working with my tutor [Ana Toribio] to get that was amazing.” He also got to represent the UK as one of five early career chemists at the second Commonwealth Chemistry Congress a few years ago in Trinidad and Tobago. 

David’s research is about understanding the environmental fate and potential health effects of tyre wear emissions. “As we drive, all of that rubber wears away, and it has to go somewhere. Pretty much all of it ends up in our environment somehow. We’re really interested in understanding the air pollution effects.” 

He explains that about 10% of tyre wear goes up into the atmosphere and the air that we breathe. “So it’s an inhalation toxicology project about characterising, generating, and then health assessing tyre wear nanoparticles.”

David learned very quickly that nobody has developed a reference material for tyre wear, and ended up making a machine that can make tyre wear nanoparticles from scratch, with some help from independent consultants and the University. Now he is working in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Public Health in Utrecht.

The future implications of David’s research are far-reaching. “Exhaust emissions are going down rapidly, but they’re going to be replaced by brake wear and tyre wear as the dominant particle. The total number of particles will still be lower, but we’re just shifting that percentage composition of our air from something that we know a lot about, and is very well characterised, to something we know very little about.”

There are currently no alternatives to tyres that we can conceive, and they have remained relatively unchanged since the 1940s. “It's about how we work with all the stakeholders to understand what improvements we can make to tackle what is potentially quite a significant whole ecosystem challenge.”

When David started his project, there were very few people reading and publishing on it – but now it’s a real hot topic, helped particularly by a 2021 paper on a tyre additive called 6PPD, which is an antioxidant discovered to be responsible for massive fish kills in North America. 

“Coho salmon are really sensitive to this,” says David. “Every time there’s a storm, it washes the tyre wear off the road, into the river, and kills these fish before they can spawn. So that’s picked up a lot of media attention, and now everyone wants to talk about tyres!”

When asked about being a member of Wolfson, David explains that although he didn’t choose Wolfson, he loves being here. Having come up through the Irish university system, first at Maynooth and then University College Dublin, he didn’t understand the collegiate system fully when he applied. 

“At Wolfson, the approach is very inclusive, and the relaxed ethos is incredible. If you’re coming as an outsider and you want the option of experiencing all the traditions, you can pick and choose how much of that you buy into. I think Wolfson’s real strength is that you can do as much of it as you want. I’ve had some great mentors as well. I feel really, really supported, and I know that if I ever need the College, they will have my back, which is quite reassuring.”

Outside of his research, David’s time in Cambridge has converted him into a keen rower. He learned to row at Wolfson, then went on to captain the men’s team in his second year, when both the women’s and men’s sides won their blades. David gestures toward the dark blue oars displayed on the Club Room wall and smiles. “Nobody has dethroned us yet!” From there, he joined the committee at Cambridge University Combined Boat Clubs (CUCBC), and he is training to become a regional umpire with British Rowing.

Looking back at all that he has achieved so far, David's message for his younger self would be one of self-belief. 

“Basically, back yourself. You will come through it. If I said to myself at the start of secondary school, even at the start of 2020, that I’d be finishing a PhD from Cambridge and that I’d be engaged, I wouldn't have believed it. Just keep going.” He thinks for a moment longer. “And sometimes the best opportunities come completely from left field, and they’re the fun ones. You should follow them.”