Prof. Csaba Sinka

Csaba Sinka graduated with a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London (1998). He joined the University of Leicester as a Research Associate in the mechanics of powder materials. He then worked for six years in pharmaceutical tablet formulation design and process development for Merck in the US and UK. He re-joined the University of Leicester as a Lecturer in 2006 and was promoted to Professor in Mechanics of Materials in 2019.
 
Csaba’s research is in the general area of mechanics of granular and powder materials. He has long-standing research interests in constitutive model development and implementation into finite element software with applications to powder compaction and contact mechanics. He also developed models for the flow of fine and cohesive powders under differential air pressure with applications to die-fill on rotary tablet presses. He established methods for characterizing the mechanical constitutive properties of powders, linked density distributions in pharmaceutical tablets to hardness, friability, and disintegration, and introduced X-ray CT and NMR imaging to tablets. His research includes multi-scale and multi-physics modeling of swelling and disintegration of multi-component polymeric structures and droplet drying.
 
Csaba was the PI of the EPSRC-funded project “Virtual Formulation Laboratory for Prediction and Optimisation of Manufacturability of advanced solids based formulations” (VFL), a collaboration between 4 Universities and 15 companies (2017-2021). This project set up a framework for linking bulk powder properties to particles, and particle properties to molecular structure with applications to flow, segregation, caking, and compaction. His current research is focused on understanding sticking (undesired adhesion of powders to metal surfaces), the use of machine learning tools in secondary processing, and extending the VFL framework to further manufacturing problems.