MaXtaloy

People

Welcome to the MaXtaloy - Materials Discovery group. We are a young and diverse research team of talented students and visitors from more than 8 countries, led by Dr. Pham at Imperial College London. Our research focuses on the design of advanced materials (meta-materials, architected materials) for sustainable structures and energy systems, additive manufacturing (ie 3D printing) and mechanical integrity (including fatigue, creep and Hydrogen embrittlement of alloys). Our research has been hightlighted in Nature, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, J. of Mech. and Phys. of Solids, Int. J. of Plasticity and in many Press channels - Science News, Dutch Newspaper NRC, Physics World, Chemical & Eng News, EurekAlert, etc.

Group photo: first row, from left to right: Chen, Minsoo, Jinqian, Son, Kelu;

second row: Jie, Tom, Stepan, Jump, Alessandro, Bogdan, Peter

Principal Investigator:

Dr. Minh-Son (Son) Pham is a senior lecturer (i.e Associate Professor) in Engineering Alloys at Imperial College London. Before joing Imperial, he was a Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University and a Guest Researcher at NIST 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 Young 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 of 10 PhD students, 1 postdoc and 5 MSc/MEng students in Advanced Materials for Sustainable Structures and Energy Systems. His research focuses on key elements (life expansion, integrity/reliability, high performance, repairing) of materials for circular economy, additive manufacturing (i.e. 3d printing), mechanical integrity, meta-materials and materials informatics. 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 of Steels. He is 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, ETHZ and Purdue.

Follow Dr. Pham on Twitter @DrPham_ICL

Postdocs

Dr. Chen Liu: Crystal-inspired design for high strength and programmable meta-materials

Phd students:

Jalal Al-Lami: Processing, Microstructure and Creep of 3D printed Inconel 718

Jianian Yong: Programmable architected materials

Hsing-Lin Wu: Multiaxial deformation behaviour of archtiected materials

Claudia Tatiana Santos Maldonado: Hydrogen embrittlement in 3D printed Nickel superalloy

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

MSc/MEng students

Phuc Hoang, MSc student

Julius Dohm, MSc student

Alumni

Prof. Hang Xu (postdoc from 01/2020 -05/2022): Now Full Professor at Harbin Institute of Tech, China

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 (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: Senior researcher, Korean Institute of Materials Science (PhD thesis: Fatigue behaviour of 3D printed high entropy alloy)

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, 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, Ph.D. in Materials Processing Engineering, China Aviation Academy, 2014

Project: Microstructural analysis and constitutive modelling of Ni-based superalloy FGH96

Dr. Liu Chen, 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