Research Team

Dr Jinghua Zheng completed a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London,   during which she developed a constrained ageing technique for residual stress reduction in aluminium aircraft components. She also established and validated physically-based constitutive equations and for FE models of residual stress and yield strength distributions in components. Based at Imperial College London, Jinghua’s...

Dr Christopher Stuart Daniel recently obtained his EngD from the University of Manchester with a thesis on the development of crystallographic orientations (textures) during hot-rolling of dual-phase zirconium alloys. In LightForm, Christopher leads the in-situ characterisation of light alloys and is working to develop in-situ characterisation capabilities for studying the micro-mechanics of deformation at elevated and hot and warm forming...

Dr Patryk Jedrasiak completed an MPhil in Engineering and a PhD in numerical modelling of friction welding at the University of Cambridge, where he is now a Research Associate. Patryk’s research experience includes a fellowship at Harvard University, focusing on a novel Eulerian numerical method for simulating elastoplastic solids, 3 years part-time at the industrial sponsor of his PhD,...

Dr Paloma Hidalgo-Manrique completed a PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid, focusing  on the processing of fine-grained microstructures by accumulative roll bonding, and how it can be used to produce material that can be superplastically formed more easily. Since then she has worked on the fundamental deformation mechanisms in Mg alloys as part of LATEST2 and project MAGMAN ....

Dr Adam Plowman has recently completed a PhD at The University of Manchester, using first principles atomistic simulation to study zirconium grain boundaries, with the aim of understanding the pellet-cladding interaction in the fuel rod cladding tubes of light water nuclear reactors. In LightForm, Adam will create a framework to improve modelling capabilities in assessing the formability of light alloys....

Dr Alex Cassell has worked on several research programmes since completion of a PhD on the environmentally assisted degradation mechanisms in light alloys. Working in the Corrosion and Protection Centre he has expertise on the multi-scale characterisation of high performance aluminium alloys. His research has included the study of hydrogen embrittlement (HE) and stress corrosion mechanisms in light alloys, the...

Dr Peter Crowther completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Bristol where he worked on the study of the structure of glassy materials. This involved both experimental microscopy and molecular simulation work and the development of new algorithms for processing and analysing the data. Peter now works as a Research Software Engineer at The University of Manchester in...

Dr Sumeet Mishra recently completed his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur with a thesis on experimental and theoretical investigations of the effect of precipitates on mechanical behaviour and deformation texture of an aluminium-magnesium-silicon alloy. Prior to joining The University of Manchester, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Indian Institute of Science Bangalore where his research work involved understanding...