Richard Lyons is a polymer chemist, and Senior Research Scientist at Uberbinder, who turns one of the planet’s most abundant waste materials — sulfur — into something the world urgently needs. In his role at Uberbinder, he leads the bench chemistry behind the company’s sulfur-based binder — the work that lets a low-value industrial by-product replace and extend the fossil bitumen that holds the world’s roads together.

Richard earned his Master of Chemistry with first-class honours and his PhD at the University of Liverpool, working in the world-leading group of Professor Andy Cooper FRS and Dr. Reiner Sebastian Sprick. His doctoral research — developing organic photocatalysts for renewable solar fuels and high-value chemicals — produced publications in journals including Advanced Energy Materials and Materials Horizons, with further papers under review.

Before joining Uberbinder, Richard engineered sulfur-based polymers to capture mercury from wastewater at start-up ThioTech, turning frontier materials chemistry into deployable environmental solutions. He brings that same instinct to roads with more than seven years of polymer research aimed squarely at problems that matter, paired with deep command of the analytical techniques needed to prove a new material works.

At Uberbinder, Richard is where the science meets the road — translating breakthrough sulfur-polymer chemistry into a binder that can be made at scale, laid with existing equipment, and trusted to last.