Welcome to the MaXtaloy - Materials Discovery group at Imperial College London. We are a diverse research team of talented students and visitors from across the world, led by Dr. Pham at Imperial College London. Our research focuses on the design of advanced materials (meta-materials, architected materials), additive manufacturing (ie, 3D printing) and metallurgy. Our research has been published in Nature, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, J. of Mech. and Phys. of Solids, Int. J. of Plasticity, and highlighted in many Press channels - Science News, Dutch Newspaper NRC, Physics World, Chemical & Eng News, EurekAlert, etc.
Embedded Files
Group photo (taken in 2017): first row, from left to right: Chen, Minsoo, Jinqian, Son, Kelu;
second row: Jie, Tom, Stepan, Jump, Alessandro, Bogdan, Peter
https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/son.pham
Principal Investigator:
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Minh-Son (Son) Pham is a Associate Professor (Reader level) in Engineering Alloys at Imperial College London. He is a visiting professor at École normale supérieure Paris Saclay in 2026. Before joing Imperial, he was a Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University and a Guest Researcher at National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA) from Jan. 2013 to Dec. 2015. He obtained a Doctor of Science Degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2013 with distinction the ETH Medal 2013. He is awarded the Early Career Innovator Award 2024 in Materials Science of Additive Manufacturing given by the TMS - one of the largest Materials Societies (https://www.tms.org/). His CV is given here: Curriculum Vitae
He currently leads a research group carrying out fundamental studies for discovery and design of advanced materials for a range of applications from energy generation/distribution, aerospace and space to medical devices. His research focuses on key elements (material design, lifetime, integrity/reliability, performance, repairing) of materials. His research has been highlighted by Nature Editor's - "3D printing mimics metals" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00139-4, Physics World, Reuters.
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). Dr. Pham is an associate editor for Journal of Micormechanics and Molecular Physics and member of the editorial board of the Metal and Materials International sitting at multiple scientific committees (including London Materials Society, Additive Manufacturing Benchmarking).
He teaches multiple subjects at Imperial: Partial Differential Equations, Fracture Mechanics, Additive Manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing), Microstructure Engineering. He is currently the Deputy Director of the MSc programme in Advanced Materials Science & Engineering at Imperial. Previouse, he was a placement coordinator and careers adviser in the department of Materials, looking after the exchange programmes in Materials and Nuclear Engineering between Imperial and other universities including MIT, Cornell, Tokyo Science.
More about Dr. Pham:
Group members (updated in 01/2026)
Group members (updated in 01/2026)
Postdocs
Postdocs
Junyun Chen: Elasto-Caloric Cooling enabled by Shape Memory Alloys
PhD students:
PhD students:
Chiebuka Christopher: Shape-morphing and Programmable Metamaterials
Hsing-Lin Wu: Multiaxial Deformation Behaviour of Metamaterials
Raymond Wong: Materials Informatics for Additive Manufacturing
Zhen Wang: Data-driven Alloy Design for Additive Manufacturing
Current MSc/MEng students
Current MSc/MEng students
McLeod Fraser
Eytan Valansi-Karako
Victor Dudley
Amy Lam
Ruihan Wu
Ruoying Zhang
Alumni
Alumni
PhD students/Postdocs
Dr. Claudia Tatiana Santos Maldonado (PhD student from 10/2019 - 07/2024. Thesis: Hydrogen embrittlement in 3D printed Nickel superalloy). Now at CERN, Switzerland
Dr. Jalal Al-Lami (PhD student from 10/2018 - 03/2023. Thesis: Processing, Microstructure and Creep of 3D printed Inconel 718). Most recently known affiliation: University of Oxford
Prof. Hang Xu (postdoc from 01/2020 -05/2022): Now Assistant Professor at Concorde Uni, Canada
Dr. Alessandro Piglione. Now: Materials R&D Specialist, Brembo (PhD thesis: Microstructure and fatigue behaviour of Ni-based superalloys in aero-engines)
Dr. Bogdan Dovgyy: Now Lecturer, and CEO of the IAMG International (PhD thesis: Machine learning-based design alloys for additive manufacturing)
Dr. Jedsada Lertthanasarn: (PhD thesis: Modelling and Simulation of multi-scale hierarchical meta-crystals)
Dr. MinSoo Jin (PhD thesis: Fatigue behaviour of 3D printed high entropy alloy). 2026 update: Postdoc fellow at Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Dusseldolf.
Dr. Chen Liu (PhD thesis: Crystal-inspired design for high strength and programmable meta-materials). Now postdoc at Imperial
MEng, MSc and UG students:
Kit Gordon-Brown, MEng student, Kirigami-inspired morphing structures. Now at University of Cambridge
Niny Qiu, MEng student, Statistical analysis of plastic anisotropy in AM alloys
Eason Liu, MEng student, Fracture behaviour of metamaterials.
Adi Shyam, MSc student
Amelia How, Exchange student from MIT (now back to MIT)
Pria Sawhney, Exchange student. 2025 update: with MIT
Emilio Ahuactzin-Garcia, UG student. 2025 update: with MIT. 2026: PhD student at UIUC.
Phuc Hoang, MSc student
Julius Dohm, MSc student
Stepan Kolacek, MEng student. Now: Boston Consulting Group
Max Moyle, MEng student. Now: PhD student at UNSW Sidney
Shangqi Sun, MSc student
Weicheng Wen, MSc student
Dr. Jian Yu (Visiting), Project: Fatigue damage and microstructure of Ni single crystals in aeroengines
Dr. Jinquian Zhao Project: Fatigue damage and microstructures of Ni single crystals in aeroengines
Dr. Wenyong Xu (Visiting), Ph.D. in Materials Processing Engineering, China Aviation Academy, 2014
Project: Microstructural analysis and constitutive modelling of Ni-based superalloy FGH96
Dr. Liu Chen (Visiting), PhD in Solid Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2012
Project: Crystal plasticity-based modelling for fatigue behaviour of TiAl alloy
Jie Lu, MEng student, now MSc student in UC Berkeley.
Peter Ganson, MEng student
Marie Pirotais, MEng student
Chayanont Taksinawong, MSc student
Zhiying Xia, MSc student
Yi Wang, MEng student
Robin Bai, MEng student
Tom Walton, UROP student, now MSc in Computer Science, Imperial
Kelu Yu, UROP student. Now MSc in Aeronautics, Imperial
Stepan Kolacek, UROP student: Alloy design for AM
Bogdan Dovgyy, MEng (now PhD student in the group)
Alessandro Piglione, MSc (now PhD student in the group)
Alexander Bergsmo, MSc (now PhD student with Prof. Dunne):
Zhin Mai, MEng student (Now PhD student in Oxford Univ.)
Ming-Chia Yang, MEng student: Quantifying pore size and distribution in additive manufactured metals
Yini Weng, BEng student: Microstructural conditions of AM 316 steel.
Taylor Gould, visiting BSc student from Lehigh Univ, USA: Microstructural characterisation of 3D printed 316 steel
Paul Sandman (co-supervised with Dr. Davies): Crystal plasticity of 3D printed alloys
Tristan Calvet (co-supervised with Dr. Davies): Fatigue-creep interaction of materials in fusion energy
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