Deadline: 8 Oct 2025
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Salary range: £49,017 – £57,472 per annum
Location/campusSouth Kensington Campus – On site only
Contract type work patternFull time – Fixed term
Posting End Date8 Oct 2025
About the role
Applications are encouraged for a Research Associate in advanced alloy characterisation to work on the UKRI/EPSRC New Investigator Award project “Hydrogen Embrittlement Mitigation by Engineering Grain Boundary Composition” (HEnGB). The project, led by Dr Livia Cupertino-Malheiros, aims at engineering the composition of grain boundaries to develop a new class of alloys that are less weakened when exposed to hydrogen.
You will have access to state-of-the-art experimental facilities (e.g., infrastructure-materials, cryomicroscopy, royce-imperial). The initial term will be one year, with the potential to extend the appointment for up to 3 years (the project duration).
You will be integrated in the Metals Degradation and Sustainability research group and expected to maximise the collaborative opportunities associated with this project. Specifically, the work will be conducted in close collaboration with Imperial’s Materials and Mechanical Engineering Departments and with the University of Oxford.
What you would be doing
You will be responsible for designing and manufacturing alloy candidates, characterising their grain structure (nature, orientation and composition) and testing their susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement. You will be expected to improve experimental protocols to characterise the co-segregation of deuterium and other elements to grain boundaries using cryogenic APT analyses and contribute for the development of new micromechanical testing devices for hydrogen embrittlement testing. You will also take part in collaborative numerical modelling work, participate in activities of the research group, submit publications to reputed journals and liaise with academic collaborators and sponsors.
About the Author
