Plenary Speakers

Michel Rappaz, Aluminium alloys and their particular behavior in solidification

With a PhD in solid state physics from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Michel Rappaz has joined the Institute of Materials of EPFL in 1981 after a post-doc at Oak Ridge National Lab. After more than thirty years of activity at EPFL in the field of solidification, he retired in 2015 and is now Emeritus Professor and independent consultant for several industries and research centres. His main interests are the coupling of macroscopic aspects of heat and mass transfer with microscopic aspects of microstructure and defect formation. He is still collaborating with several universities, in particular the Université de Lorraine, industries and the start-up company Novamet SàrL. Michel Rappaz has received several awards, in particular the Mathewson award of TMS (1997), the Grand Medal from the French Materials Society (2011), the Bruce Chalmers Award of TMS (2002), the FEMS European Materials Gold Medal (2013), the Brimacombe Prize of TMS (2015) and a title of Doctor of Science - honoris causa from McMaster Univ. (2019). He is a highly-cited author of ISI, a fellow of ASM and TMS, and has co-authored more than 200 publications and two books.

John Banhart, Exploring the hidden world of solute atoms, clusters and vacancies in aluminium alloys

John Banhart is a physicist with a PhD in Physical Chemistry earned at the University of Munich in 1989 where he researched the electronic structure of alloys. He worked at the Department of Powder Metallurgy of Fraunhofer-Institute in Bremen before becoming Professor in Materials Science at the Technical University of Berlin and Head of the Institute of Applied Materials at the Helmholtz-Centre Berlin in 2002. He has been a visiting scientist in Melbourne, Sydney and Bangalore for longer periods.
His main research interests are in light metallic materials and materials for energy conversion and storage as well as in the methods needed to explore their structure. Among the materials and systems studied are aluminium alloys, aluminium foams, fuel cells and batteries. The methods applied include imaging techniques such as radiography and tomography based on X-rays (from tubes and synchrotron sources) and neutrons and characterization techniques such as positron annihilation spectroscopy.

Peter Basten, Opportunities for aluminium solutions in an evolving automotive market

Peter Basten has held the position of President, Packaging and Automotive Rolled Products business unit at Constellium since October 2017. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President, Strategy, Business Development, Research & Technology following his time as Constellium’s Managing Director of Soft Alloys Europe at the company’s Automotive Structures and Industry Business Unit. In 2005, he joined Alcan Specialty Sheet (part of Constellium since 2011) as the Director of Strategy and Business Planning, becoming Director of Sales and Marketing in 2008, responsible for the aluminium packaging applications markets. Prior to joining Alcan, Mr. Basten was a consultant at Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm. His responsibilities ranged from developing marketing, corporate strategy, pricing and competitive strategy to M&A and optimizing manufacturing operations. Mr. Basten holds degrees in Applied Physics from the Delft University of Technology and in Economics & Corporate Management from the École Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs.

Olivier Vidal, Energy transitions : foreseen consequences on the Aluminium market

Maurine Montagnat, Inside a deep ice core. From small scale processes to large scale flow

Maurine Montagnat conducts her research at Institut of Geosciences of Environment (CNRS and University Grenoble Alpes). She focuses on the understanding and modeling of fundamental mechanisms of ice (snow and firn) deformation, from the dislocation to the ice sheet scale. Her work stands on strong collaborations with the Earth science and metallic material communities to share and co-develop experimental and modeling tools (Digital Image Correlation, EBSD, Xray tomography, Full-field modeling, Finite Element, etc.). She is currently at the Center for Snow Studies (CEN CNRM Météo-France, Grenoble) to explore this porous or evolutionary granular material that is snow.

Early Career Researcher Awards

Following the same spirit as ICAA16 in Montreal, six awards will be distributed to early career researchers on the basis of the quality of their scientific research and on their ability to communicate these results.

Three of these awards have been attributed to PhD students (or having defended their thesis after Nov. 1st, 2018), and three have been attributed to post-doctoral researchers having defended their thesis after Nov. 1st, 2015.

The awardees will give a 15 minutes plenary talk during the conference.

Thomas Klein : “In situ alloying of aluminium-based alloys by (multi-)wire-arc additive manufacturing”

Dr. Thomas Klein graduated in Materials Science from the Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria. In his PhD he worked on the phase constitution and deformation mechanisms of intermetallic gamma-TiAl alloys for aerospace applications. His PhD thesis has received several awards including the Theodor Körner award and the DGM-Nachwuchspreis. After his postdoctoral assignment at the Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH, Austria, Thomas Klein joined the Light Metals Technologies Ranshofen, Austria, in March 2019 as scientist in the field of alloy and process development for light-metal wire-based additive manufacturing technologies. In his research he focuses on the special requirements of alloys tailored for processing by additive manufacturing.

Huan Zhao : "Segregation and precipitation at grain boundaries in an Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy"

Dr. Huan Zhao is working at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE, Germany) as a postdoctoral researcher. She received her Ph.D. degree at MPIE and RWTH Aachen University in October 2019. The topic of her thesis is Segregation and precipitation at interfaces in a model Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy. Prior to that, she obtained her master’s degree in materials engineering from Chongqing University (China) in July 2015. She was a visiting scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2013. Dr. Zhao was honored the Acta Student Award 2018 and the TMS Light Metals Subject Award - Aluminium Alloys in 2019. Dr. Zhao is devoted to unveiling the microstructure-property relationship in structural materials by characterizing the chemistry and structure at the atomic scale using atom probe tomography and electron microscopy. Her current research interest focuses on the local chemistry at defects of high strength Al-alloys to further understand their corrosion properties.

Christopher Kohar : Using Artificial Intelligence to Aid Vehicle Lightweighting in Crashworthiness with Aluminum”

Dr. Christopher Kohar is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Professor Kaan Inal. He completed his PhD in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering in April 2017 focusing on multi-scale modeling and optimization techniques, using artificial intelligence, for enhancing energy absorption characteristics of lightweight automotive structures. He held a visiting scientist role at General Motors of Canada from May 2017 to April 2019 where he focused on developing new computational techniques for accelerating the CAE development process in modeling failure and fracture in aluminum for crash simulation. Dr. Kohar is responsible for developing advanced CAE simulations and tools for various automotive and manufacturing companies, and developing new constitutive models for advanced materials. His current research focus is on using artificial intelligence to aid in the development and acceleration of CAE simulations.

Tsai-Fu Chung "Twin relationship in between the variant-pair of η precipitates in the Al-Zn-Mg-Cu aluminium alloy"

Tsai-Fu, Chung received the B.S. degree in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Tsing Hua University in 2014. Then he directly studies in Ph.D. in the Laboratory of Phase Transformation Materials Analysis (supervisor: Professor Jer-Ren, Yang), Department of Material Science and Engineering at National Taiwan University. His research interests focus on the nucleation and growth of precipitates in aluminium alloys (such as Al-Zn-Mg-Cu and Al-Cu-Li alloys) employed by Cs-corrected high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (Cs-corrected HAADF STEM) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). In addition, he is also major in microstructure analysis of alloy steels and high entropy alloys by the electron microscopy.

Shravan Kairy "Understanding the corrosion of 6xxx Al-alloys by advanced microstructural and electrochemical characterisation"

Dr. Shravan Kairy is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Monash University, Clayton, Australia, where he obtained his PhD in 2017. He was awarded ‘2017 Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation’ in the Faculty of Engineering for his thesis, ‘The influence of microstructure and microchemistry on the corrosion of 6xxx series aluminium alloys’. He was the 2019 recipient of ‘A.B. Campbell award’, and 2015 winner of ‘Marcel Pourbaix award’ at CORROSION-NACE, USA. In his postdoc, he broadened his expertise and knowledge from 6xxx Al-alloys to different Al-alloy systems, including additively manufactured Al-alloys. His current research focus on understanding the genesis and propagation of corrosion in aluminium alloys by advanced microstructural and electrochemical characterisation techniques for the development of durable alloys.

Emil Christiansen, "Detailed investigation of the shearing mechanism of beta'' precipitates in Al-Mg-Si alloys"

Dr. Emil Christiansen completed his PhD in physics at NTNU – the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in the fall of 2019 and is currently working at the department of Physics at NTNU as a joint postdoctoral researcher and technician. As a technician at the TEM Gemini Centre, he works on developing transmission electron microscopy techniques, training, and education. His research is connected to the Centre for Advanced Structural Analysis (CASA) at NTNU, where he applies advanced transmission electron microscopy to study the nanoscale of deformed aluminium alloys. This work aims to understand more of how age-hardenable aluminium alloys deform on the nanoscale and provide knowledge that can help improve the foundation of physically based multi-scale modelling frameworks. Currently, he works on understanding the role of precipitate free zones during deformation and fracture processes and how precipitates are sheared during deformation.