Chief investigators and postdoctoral researchers
Sophie Primig
Alcoa Distinguished Professor (Group leader)
Sophie is currently an Alcoa Distinguished Professor and ARC Future Fellow at UNSW Sydney. Her research contributions are in processing-structure-property relationships of structural alloys. She was awarded her PhD from Montanuniversität Leoben (Austria) in 2012. After a short postdoc and a role as leader of a group with strong industry linkages at the same university, she moved to UNSW in 2015. She holds two UNSW Grad Certs in Education and Management. She is a passionate student-focused teacher, editor of Journal of Materials Science, current TMS Phase Transformation Committee Chair and active Materials Australia member.
Andrew Breen
Senior postdoctoral fellow (Deputy group leader)
Andrew joined our team as deputy group leader in March 2024. He contributes to projects on superalloys and additively manufactured alloys. Andrew received his PhD from USyd in 2014 where he remained as an atom probe support engineer until 2016. He then undertook a Humboldt Fellowship at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (Germany) to observe hydrogen in metals. In 2019, he returned to USyd as senior postdoc in the AUSMURI project. Andrew is a leading expert in microstructural characterisation, particularly advanced atom probe analysis techniques with ongoing close ties to USyd.
Xinyi (Cindy) He
Postdoctoral fellow
Xinyi (Cindy) was born in China. Her keen interest in metal additive manufacturing was fostered at The University of Sydney where she completed her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering with flying colours (2021). Her honours thesis focused on microstructure-property relationships of additively manufactured high-entropy alloys. Her PhD in our UNSW group was on micromechanisms of phase transformations in additively manufactured duplex stainless steels. She continues to thrive as a PostDoc with key interests in engineering microstructures via additive manufacturing and 3D characterisation.
Ehsan Farabi
Postdoctoral fellow
Ehsan joined our team in early 2022. He received his PhD in 2020 from Deakin University, studying phase transformation and interface characteristics in titanium alloys. He then continued research on designing novel biomedical alloys and fundamentals of microstructure evolution during solid state additive manufacturing of steels and titanium alloys. Ehsan specializes in the analysis of complex microstructures using high resolution characterization techniques (EBSD and TEM), combining experimental results with physical principles. His current research aims to design next generation aerospace materials by developing advanced thermo-mechanical routes.
Vitor Rielli
Alcoa and Scientia Lecturer
Vitor is originally from Brazil. He was a Scientia PhD student in our group until 2022. He continued to research with us as Post Doctoral Fellow focusing on the microstructural design of high performance alloys for extreme applications such as aerospace. His skills are in physical metallurgy, advanced materials characterisation, and manufacturing. He completed a Master’s project on titanium matrix composites in Brazil. He has also studied and researched in the USA, Canada, Spain, and Germany. In 2024, he was awarded an industry sponsored lectureship and with tenure track and accepted into the Scientia Program at UNSW.
Nima Haghdadi
Adjunct Senior Lecturer
Nima now a Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and continues to have close ties with our group. He was awarded his PhD in 2017 from Deakin University (Australia), for a thesis on thermo-mechanical processing of duplex stainless steels. He is a former Victoria Fellow and Alfred Deakin Research Fellow, and recipient of Thermo Fisher Scientific Cowley-Moodie award. Nima’s main interest is in-situ engineering of microstructures of steels and other advanced alloys during 3D printing. He was the lead researcher of the UNSW-based team in the AUSMURI project. He was a PostDoc and Lecturer in our group for over 5 years (2019-2024).Current PhD and MSc students
Yingyi (Jane) Yang
PhD Student
Jingyi (Jane) Yang is originally from China. She completed her undergraduate program in our school, where she developed a passion for metallurgy. This was through her honours project with Kevin Laws titled 'Free Machining of High Entropy Brass'. This experience sparked her interest in metal manufacturing processes, leading her to pursue a PhD in this area. Her PhD project aims to harness laser powder bed fusion to achieve 3D gradient microstructures in stainless steel. Through this work, she hopes to advance metal additive manufacturing and contribute to developing innovative, high-performance materials.
Ally Bradley
PhD student
Ally is a university medallist who recently completed her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering/biomedical engineering at UNSW Sydney. We have known her as a casual research assistant since 2020, when she was awarded the Infrabuild Steel Research Activity. Ally completed various internships at Infrabuild’s melt shop and rolling mill. She then pursued her honour’s project on metal additive manufacturing of superalloys in our group. Her PhD is on the processability of Co-based superalloys. She is adventurous and has travelled through Australia and NZ in her campervan.
David Pham
PhD student
David is an international student from Vietnam who moved to Sydney for his final years of high school. He recently completed his undergraduate program in Materials at UNSW and was awarded a full PhD scholarship. David was awarded the Infrabuild research activity in 2021 and then continued with an honour's project on thermo-mechanical processing of superalloys with us. He is now pursuing a PhD aimed at increasing the fraction of revert materials that can be used in manufacturing of Ni-based superalloys. He hopes to apply his knowledge as a future materials engineer, perhaps in industry.
Qiuqin Li
PhD student
Qiuqin was born and grew up in China. She got her Master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Sichuan University and won a Chinese national scholarship in 2022. Her master's thesis focused on the mechanism of performance improvement of cemented carbide after pulsed magnetic treatment. Her master’s group project – pulsed electromagnetic field treatment for micro defects repair and performance regulation of 3D printed parts fostered her interest in additive manufacturing. She focuses on the study of microstructure control via grain boundary engineering during 3D printing in her PhD.
Hubert Lee
PhD student
Hubert is an international student from Indonesia who recently concluded his bachelor's degree in Materials Science and Engineering at UNSW (2022). During his undergraduate studies, he developed an avid interest in the iron-making industry and submitted an Honour's thesis project on the hydrogen direct reduction of Fe2O3. Eager to contribute more to the metallurgy domain, he then continued as a casual research assistant in Sophie's group. After winning a full international scholarship, he is now pursuing a PhD with us on robust and sustainable superalloy manufacturing in our group.
Adedoyin Michael Lasisi
PhD student
Adedoyin Michael Lasisi was born in Nigeria, and relocated to South Africa where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Johannesburg (South Africa). His master’s research focused on the synthesis, CFD simulation and characterization of direct laser metal deposition Al-Cu-Ti coatings on the Ti-6Al-4V alloy for aerospace applications. His current research focuses is on wire arc additive manufacturing of Ti alloys, characterization of their microstructural evolution, and mechanical properties.
Ming Luo
PhD student
Ming is a PhD student who joined us in August 2021. His research focuses microstructural engineering via controlling the grain boundary character distribution in additively manufactured specialty alloys including stainless steels and Ni-based superalloys. Ming grew up in China and completed his undergraduate program in mechanical engineering and his MPhil at The University of Sydney. His previous research focused on the development of high-performance polymeric composites using 3D printing. He is excited to start working on a promising project via metal 3D printing in our team at UNSW Sydney.Current undergrad and master's coursework students
Haochen Zhang
Master's coursework student
Haochen is originally from China. He completed his undergraduate program in Shanghai, focusing on metallic materials. He is now pursuing a master’s coursework degree at UNSW. His research project is centered on the application and optimization of additive manufacturing for high-performance alloys with graded microstructures. He chose this topic because additive manufacturing is increasingly used in industry. He believes that optimizing alloys can solve many practical manufacturing challenges. He is very excited to be joining our group and working with us.
Yibo Wang
Advanced Science Honour's student
Yibo is originally from China and is now pursuing a bachelor of Advanced Science with an honours thesis in materials science & engineering. His research focus is on the high-temperature performance of cobalt-based superalloys. He is evaluating the microstructure changes in Haynes 188 during standard heat treatments, with particular focus on the identification and evolution of various carbides.
Hongchhay Heng
Master's coursework student
Hongchhay is a graduate of the Institute of Technology of Cambodia with a bachelor's degree in Geotechnical Engineering. He took part in the JICA Program and investigated the geothermal source and reservoir in Kampong Speu Province, Cambodia. He studied the physical properties of ancient bricks from temples in the Sambor Prei Kuk region. He participated in Kanazawa University's Exchange Program and completed a project on contaminated lake sediment from Orog Lake, Mongolia. These experiences motivated him to pursue a master's program in Materials Engineering at UNSW. He is enthusiastic about studying superalloys in his project.Selected recent alumni
Nana Kwabena Adomako
Scientia PhD student
Nana was born and raised in Ghana. He obtained his bachelor's and master's degree in Materials Engineering from Kwame University of Science and Technology (Ghana) and Hanbat National University (South Korea). His master's research focused on developing functionally graded alloys using additive manufacturing. In his PhD thesis, despite all challenges of being stuck overseas most of the first year, he developed computational and physical modeling pipelines to unravel microstructure-property relationships during additive manufacturing of Ni-based superalloys. He then landed a PostDoc position at Oakridge National Lab.
Michael Haines
Postdoc & PhD alumnus
Michael grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and completed his master’s degree at The University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His master’s thesis was on scan strategy impacts on the annealed microstructure in additively manufactured soft magnetic Fe-Si alloys, including 6 month stint at Max Planck Institute for Iron Research in Germany. He completed his PhD and a short PostDoc in our group exploring the effects of thermal gyrations on the liquid-solid and solid-solid phase transformations in additive manufacturing. He was then awarded a fellowship at NIST (Gaithersburg) where he continues to research additive manufacturing.
Felix Theska
Postdoc & PhD alumnus
Felix joined the group in 2016 after completing a master's in materials science at the University of Technology Ilmenau (Germany), initially as one of the first UNSW-based PhD students in our group. He was arwaded his PhD for his thesis on high resolution characterisation of strengthening effects in superalloys in early 2020. He is an expert in high-resolution characterisation methods including SEM/FIB, atom probe, and TEM, and was our go-to person for microscopy and metallography. He now thrives as senior technical officer for atom probe sample prep at famous Australian Centre for Microscopy & Microanalysis at USyd across the road.
Wai (Wilson) Tse
MSc student
Wai (Wilson) was born in Hong Kong, and did his undergrad in Materials Science & Engineering at UNSW Sydney. He completed his honour's project in our group in 2019. He enjoyed researching with us and pursued an MSc project too. His honour's project was on abnormal grain growth in a commercially available Ni-based superalloy for aerospace applications. His MSc focused on studying the effects of microalloying additions on the microstructural evolution during thermo-mechanical processing of the same superalloy. He is now a process engineer at our industry partner in Albury NSW.
Arnab Chakraborty
PhD student
Arnab is originally from India. In his PhD, he aimed to design novel high strength low alloy steels for automotive applications. He previously had 1.5 years of industrial experience in the product development research group at Tata Steel R&D, Jamshedpur (India). His passion is in understanding the underlying principles of strain-induced micro-alloy precipitation during thermo-mechanical processing. He completed his master’s in production engineering at Thapar University (India). His current career is still in Sydney, focused on electron microscopy.
Gabi Moss
Honour's student
Gabi was a final year undergrad student studying a bachelors of Material Science and Engineering as part of the prestigious UNSW Coop Scholarship program. After completing two 6 month industry placements with Rio Tinto in Aluminium Smelting Support, she secured an Honour’s thesis project in conjunction with Rio Tinto’s Bell Bay Aluminium in 2022. This project focused on the performance of copper rod assemblies in industrial service conditions to highlight possible improvements in service lifespan longevity. She then got offered an engineering role with Rio Tinto in the same team in Brisbane. Congrats and good luck!Alumni (UNSW Sydney)
Post Doctoral researchers
Apr-Nov 2024: Dr. Michael Haines, now PostDoc at NIST (NRC Research Associateship Program)
Nov 2022-Jun 2024: Dr. Vitor Rielli, now Alcoa and Scientia Lecturer at UNSW
May 2023-Apr 2024: Dr. Bernd Schulz, now Business Development Specialist – Materials Science at Zeiss Australia & NZ
Jan 2019-Feb 2024: Dr. Nima Haghdadi, now Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London
Sep 2019-Jun 2023: Dr. Felix Theska, now Senior Technical Officer at The University of Sydney
Postgraduate
Oct 2020-Dec 2024: Nana Kwabena Adomako, PhD student, Physical and computational simulation of additively manufactured Ni-based superalloys
Oct 2020-Aug 2024: Michael Haines, PhD student, On the effects of thermal conditions on the liquid-solid and solid-solid phase transformations in additive manufacturing
Sep 2019-Aug 2023: Bernd Schulz, PhD student, Influence of microstructural features on the hot-workability of Ni-based superalloys
Aug 2019-Aug 2023: Maxwell Moyle, PhD student, Microstructural Investigations of 17-4 PH Stainless Steel Fabricated via Laser Powder Bed Fusion
Feb 2019-Feb 2023: Vitor Vieira Rielli, PhD student, Processing-structure-property relationships in directly aged Alloy 718
Jul 2018-Jan 2023: Richard Buerstmayr, PhD student, Processing-Structure-Property Relationships in Ni-based Superalloy René 41
Feb 2020-Dec 2022: Wai (Wilson) Tse, MSc student, Hot ductility of Ni-based alloy Rene 41 with microalloying additions
Aug 2018-Sep 2022: Arnab Chakraborty, PhD student, On the design of microstructures in low carbon microalloyed steels
Aug 2017-Apr 2022: Alireza Samiee, PhD student, Role of local variations of solute atoms in the strengthening mechanisms of dilute Al alloys
Aug 2017-Oct 2021: Ryan Demott, PhD student, Characterization of Alpha Variant Selection and Morphology in Additively Manufactured Ti-6Al-4V via 3D-EBSD
Feb 2016-Aug 2020: Carina Ledermüller, PhD student, Microstructural engineering of modern high strength low alloy steels via advanced thermo-mechanical processing
Feb 2016-Feb 2020: Felix Theska, PhD student, High resolution characterisation of strengthening effects in Ni-based superalloys
Master’s coursework
Singgih Gunarso (2024), Philipp Kröker (visiting from TU Berlin, 2023), Qiulin (Aaron) An (2022), Kunyu (Bonnie) Chen (2021), Han Liu (2020), Yangming Liu (2019), Hai Huai (2019), Hafsah Pratiwi (2018), Tri Khai Duong (2018), Muyun Shi (2017), Xiaoxiang Dai (2017), Jianling Liu (2017), Fangbo Huo (2017)
Honour’s
Stella Lin (2024), David Pham (University Medal, 2023), Ally Bradley (2023), Gabi Moss (2022), Scott Jones (2022), Luke Venter (2022), Bin Yu (2021), Bailey Wilmot (2021), Mike Zhou (2020), Xingying Du (Advanced Science Honour’s, 2019), Wai (Wilson) Tse (2019), Liam Stephenson (University Medal, 2019), Mia Maric (University Medal, 2018), Dominic Nguyen (2018), Benjamin Chi Hoe Wong (2018), Cerys Edwards (2017), Muhammed Sabah (2017), Jordan Keirle (2017), Kevin Phang (2016), Bernd Schulz (2016)
Alumni (Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria)
Oct 2013-Mar 2017: Katharina Babinsky, PhD student, Grain boundary segregation in molybdenum and molybdenum alloys
Jul 2013-Dec 2016: David Lang, PhD student, Thermo-mechanical processing of molybdenum-based alloy MHC
Jul 2013-Nov 2016: Christoph Turk, PhD student, Improvement of a powder-metallurgical Maraging-type tool steel by the introduction of hard phases
Jul 2013-Oct 2016: Stephanie Sackl, PhD student, Induction versus conventional heat treatment of heat treatable steels and high-speed steels
Jul 2013-Apr 2016: Christina Hofer, PhD student, Carbide free bainitic steels for the automotive industry, bainite and in-situ tempered martensite
Oct 2014-Sep 2015: Christin Aumayr, MEng student, Influence of alloying additions on the B2 ordering of the matrix of a FeCoMo alloy
Oct 2014-Sep 2015: Carina Ledermüller, MEng student, Deformation and precipitation behaviour in a high nickel content austenitic steel
Apr 2014-June 2015: Roland Dallinger, MEng student, Deformation-time-temperature-precipitation diagrams of molybdenum-based alloy MHC
Jan 2014-Dec 2014: Roland Lorenz, MEng student, Precipitation and segregation in boron alloyed 42CrMo4 after optimization of the heat treatment
Apr 2013-Sep 2014: Phillip Haslberger, MEng student, Precipitation and segregation studies in boron alloyed 42CrMo4 steel
Apr 2013-Apr 2014: Heike Zacharias, MEng student, Precipitation and grain growth studies in microalloyed 18CrNiMo7-6 steel
Jun 2012-Jun 2013: Katharina Babinsky, MEng student, Grain boundary segregation in technically pure molybdenum