The second half of 2021 saw some new additions to the LightForm team. We also said goodbye to some of the long standing members of the team.
Newcomers
Dr. Y. Xiong
Dr. Y. Xiong obtained his PhD from Tohoku University, Japan with a thesis on the corrosion fatigue behaviours of austenitic stainless steels in nuclear environments. His research interests include the corrosion and cracking behaviours of structural materials.
He joined the LightForm team in Manchester as a PDRA in August 2021, with a project focussing on corrosion and stress corrosion cracking behaviours of aluminium alloys. Read more about his project here.
This SEM image shows initial results from Dr Xiong’s research. 7075 aluminium alloy with fast aging and an air cooling processes had intergranular corrosion in chlorine-contained solution, while the 7075 aluminium alloys with other aging or cooling process
Dr Doyin Mansell
Dr Doyin Mansell joined LightForm in November 2021 as the new project and communications manager for the grant. She recently completed her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath, during which she developed methods of quantifying changes to left ventricular function following myocardial infarction in collaboration with cardiovascular surgeons from the University of Bristol. Alongside her research, she regularly led under-18s outreach activities, organised seminars, and aided in the successful departmental application for Athena SWAN Silver status
Dr Doyin Mansell.
Leavers
Dr Peter Crowther
Dr Peter Crowther left LightForm at the beginning of December after three years with LightForm as an embedded research software engineer from the university Resaerch IT department. He is still working with Research IT at the University of Manchester, now focussing on research infrastructure instead of research software. His role involves supporting platforms such as the CSF and the Research Data Storage platform among other things.
Dr Crowther said of his time at LightForm, "I have enjoyed being embedded in the LightForm group as this enabled me to work more closely with the researchers than is common for a typical consultancy project. The ability to build relationships with the team enables better knowledge sharing and ultimately ends up producing better code and better research."
Dr Peter Crowther.
Dr Jinghua Zheng
Dr Jinghua Zheng was a LightFrom PDRA based at Imperial College London. Jinghua’s work in LightForm focused on optimizing and modelling the age hardening response in the HFQ process. This included an examination of the age hardening properties and considering the effects of prior dislocations. She left LightForm in August 2021. Read more about her research at LightForm here and here.
