Personal statement

My research interests are focused on maps for the interactions of solid particle erosion and wear of materials in corrosive environments, with specific emphasis on charting mechanisms of materials loss. My research group has pioneered a number of maps in the Tribo-Corrosion domain including the erosion-corrosion and micro-abrasion maps for aqueous environments applicable to renewable energy (wind and tidal energy), oil exploration and bio-medical conditions (hip joint replacements and dental implants).  We are also developing paradigms for combining materials and meteorological maps. 

The Tribology Research Group in the Department which I lead has attracted over £2m of research funding since 2016.  I am a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (CPhys, FInsP), of the Institute of Materials, Mining and Minerals (FIMMM) and the Institution of Engineers of Ireland (CEng, FIEI). I have a PhD (1990) and DSc (2003) from the University of Manchester.  I am also a member of the EPSRC peer review college in the UK. 

I have led the EPSRC funded ReC-ASM (£1.1m) project which aims to optimize materials in marine and tidal energy conversion and have supervised over 30 PhD students.  Many of our current projects sit in the Green Tribology and low carbon technology space.

My group has authored over 216 publications (over 160 journal articles) and has an h-index of 40 Scopus and 48 Google scholar (over 6500 citations) with an i10-index of 120. Our Research Interest Score of 2506 in ResearchGate currently exceeds that of 98% of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics researchers worldwide and 97% of ResearchGate members. It is comprised of over 85% citations in academic journals.  In the 2020 Stanford study of top 2% academics internationally, we are within the top 1% in the Mechanical Engineering and Transports ranking.

I lead the International Tribo-Corrosion Network and sit on several editorial boards including Tribology International and Lubricants.  Our collaborations on materials for energy have included the EPSRC CAMREG project with the University of Edinburgh and the EU SPIRE 2 project on novel approaches towards energy storage with University of Ulster. 

Our group has founded the first journal in Tribo-Corrosion of which I am Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Bio- and Tribo-Corrosion (Springer, New York) which published 84 papers in 2023 (CiteScore of 6.1 for 2023) and is Q1 in three categories i.e. Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics of Materials and Metals & Alloys with 96,859 downloads in 2023.

Research findings in our group have been presented in keynote and plenary lectures at over 70 national and international conferences.