You are warmly welcome to our inspirational seminar this month presented by Senior Lecturer Minh-Son Pham at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom. With an excellent research record since he was a doctoral student till now, our invited speaker will share his valuable experience on "How to carry out a successful Ph.D. study" and his research on "Metallic alloys for space and aerospace: from super-alloys to metal-crystals".

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Title: How to carry out a successful Ph.D. study

 

Abstract: I will share my own experience and thoughts on how to carry out a successful Ph.D. study from my time as a student at ETHZ (with my Ph.D. thesis was awarded the ETH Medal) and now as the main supervisor of 9 Ph.D. students (and two postdocs) at Imperial College London. 5 of my 9 Ph.D. students graduated with two being awarded best doctoral thesis awards at Imperial.

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Title: Metallic alloys for space and aerospace: from super-alloys to meta-crystals

 

Abstract: I will present some fundamentals and advances of metallic alloys that help defining humankind’s history (e.g. Iron age and Bronze age) and enable many major breakthroughs. In this talk, I will present fundamentals of physical metallurgy underpinning key mechanical performance of alloys allowing metallic alloys to work in extreme conditions in aerospace and space. Going beyond traditional metallic alloys, I will present a new class of mechanical metamaterials called meta-crystals that can be programmable to achieve desired high strength and adaptive actions (e.g. shape-morphing) for a variety of applications (including aerospace, space, automobiles, and medical devices).

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Biography:

Dr. Minh-Son Pham is a Senior Lecturer (Equiv. to Associate Professor) at Imperial College London. Previously, he was a Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University and a Guest Researcher at NIST from 2013 to 2015. He obtained a Doctor of Science degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and was awarded an ETH Medal for the best doctoral thesis. His groundbreaking research has been published in Nature, Nature Communications, J. of Mech. and Phys. of Solids, Int. J. of Plasticity, etc. He has delivered two keynotes and more than 15 invited lectures at international conferences (Programmable Materials 2020, ICMAT2019, Thermec, TMS, etc.). He graduated 5 Ph.D. students – two of them were awarded the best thesis prizes. He currently leads a research group of 4 Ph.D. students and 2 postdocs (Dr. Xu and Dr. Liu) to carry out fundamental research in additive manufacturing (ie 3D printing) and digital manufacturing, microstructure, mechanical integrity, and meta-materials. He establishes strong collaborations with industries across different sectors from aerospace, defense, automobiles, medical devices (catheters for atrial fibrillation treatment), and energy (including fusion energy) to help tackling challenges related to reliability, functionality, sustainability, and environmental issues in these sectors. He is an active reviewer for a variety of scientific journals (including Nature, Nature Comms, Science Advances, Acta Mat.) and funding bodies (EPSRC, ERC Horizon 2020, Royal Society). He currently works with medical doctors at the Hammersmith hospital to found a company that develops advanced catheters for heart surgeries.

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Time: 11:00 AM (CET) December 16, 2022 

Zoom link: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/64527653947

Chairman: Senior researcher Tung Tran, University of Adelaide, Australia