MaXtaloy - Materials Discovery

People

Welcome to the MaXtaloy - Materials Discovery group. We are a diverse research team of talented students and visitors from more than 8 countries, led by Dr. Pham at Imperial College London. Our research focuses on the design of advanced materials (meta-materials, architected materials), additive manufacturing (ie 3D printing) and mechanical integrity (including fatigue, creep and hydrogen embrittlement of alloys). Our research has been hightlighted in Nature, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, J. of Mech. and Phys. of Solids, Int. J. of Plasticity and in many Press channels - Science News, Dutch Newspaper NRC, Physics World, Chemical & Eng News, EurekAlert, etc.

Group photo (taken in 2017): first row, from left to right: Chen, Minsoo, Jinqian, Son, Kelu;

second row: Jie, Tom, Stepan, Jump, Alessandro, Bogdan, Peter

Principal Investigator:

Dr. Minh-Son (Son) Pham is a Associate Professor (Reader level) in Engineering Alloys at Imperial College London. Before joing Imperial, he was a Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University and a Guest Researcher at NIST from Jan. 2013 to Dec. 2015. He obtained a Doctor of Science Degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2013 with distinction the ETH Medal 2013. He is awarded the Early Career Innovator Award 2024 in Materials Science of Additive Manufacturing given by the TMS - one of the largest Materials Societies (https://www.tms.org/). His CV is given here: Curriculum Vitae

He currently leads a research group carrying out fundamental studies for discovery and design of advanced materials for a range of applications from energy generation/distribution, aerospace and space to medical devices. His research focuses on key elements (material design, lifetime, integrity/reliability, performance, repairing) of materials. His research has been highlighted by Nature Editor's - "3D printing mimics metals" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00139-4, Physics World, Reuters.

He is an active reviewer for a variety of scientific journals (including Nature, Nature Comms, Science Advances, Acta Mat.) and funding bodies (EPSRC, ERC Horizon 2020, Royal Society). Dr. Pham is an associate editor for Journal of Micormechanics and Molecular Physics and member of the editorial board of the Metal and Materials International sitting at multiple scientific committees (including London Materials Society, Additive Manufacturing Benchmarking).

He teaches multiple subjects at Imperial: Partial Differential Equations, Fracture Mechanics, Additive Manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing), Microstructure of Steels. He is a placement coordinator and careers adviser in the department of Materials, looking after the exchange programmes in Materials and Nuclear Engineering between Imperial and other universities including MIT, Cornell, Tokyo Science.

Follow Dr. Pham on Twitter @DrPham_ICL

Group members (updated in 01/2026)

Postdocs

xxx

Phd students:

Chiebuka Christopher: Shape-morphing and Programmable metamaterials

Hsing-Lin Wu: Multiaxial Deformation Behaviour of Metamaterials

Raymond Wong: Materials Informatics for Additive Manufacturing

Zhen Wang: Data-driven Alloy Design for Additive Manufacturing

MSc/MEng students

Kit Gordon-Brown, Kirigami-inspired morphing structures

Niny Qiu, Statistical analysis of plastic anisotropy in AM alloys

Eason Liu, Fracture behaviour of metamaterials.

Adi Shyam,

Alumni

Dr. Claudia Tatiana Santos Maldonado (PhD student from 10/2019 - 07/2024. Thesis: Hydrogen embrittlement in 3D printed Nickel superalloy). Now at CERN, Switzerland

Dr. Jalal Al-Lami (PhD student from 10/2018 - 03/2023. Thesis: Processing, Microstructure and Creep of 3D printed Inconel 718). Now at Alloyed.

Prof. Hang Xu (postdoc from 01/2020 -05/2022): Now Assistant Professor at Concorde Uni, Canada

Dr. Alessandro Piglione. Now: Materials R&D Specialist, Brembo (PhD thesis: Microstructure and fatigue behaviour of Ni-based superalloys in aero-engines)

Dr. Bogdan Dovgyy: Now Lecturer (PhD thesis: Machine learning-based design alloys for additive manufacturing)

Dr. Jedsada Lertthanasarn: (PhD thesis: Modelling and Simulation of multi-scale hierarchical meta-crystals)

Dr. MinSoo Jin (PhD thesis: Fatigue behaviour of 3D printed high entropy alloy). Now postdoc at KAIST.

Dr. Chen Liu (PhD thesis: Crystal-inspired design for high strength and programmable meta-materials). Now postdoc at Imperial

Pria Sawhney, Exchange student. 2025 update: with MIT

Emilio Ahuactzin-Garcia, UG student. 2025 update: with MIT

Phuc Hoang, MSc student

Julius Dohm, MSc student

Stepan Kolacek, MEng student. Now: Boston Consulting Group

Max Moyle, MEng student. Now: PhD student at UNSW Sidney

Shangqi Sun, MSc student

Weicheng Wen, MSc student

Dr. Jian Yu (Visiting), Project: Fatigue damage and microstructure of Ni single crystals in aeroengines

Dr. Jinquian Zhao Project: Fatigue damage and microstructures of Ni single crystals in aeroengines

Dr. Wenyong Xu (Visiting), Ph.D. in Materials Processing Engineering, China Aviation Academy, 2014

Project: Microstructural analysis and constitutive modelling of Ni-based superalloy FGH96

Dr. Liu Chen (Visiting), PhD in Solid Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2012

Project: Crystal plasticity-based modelling for fatigue behaviour of TiAl alloy

Jie Lu, MEng student, now MSc student in UC Berkeley.

Peter Ganson, MEng student

Marie Pirotais, MEng student

Chayanont Taksinawong, MSc student

Zhiying Xia, MSc student

Yi Wang, MEng student

Robin Bai, MEng student

Tom Walton, UROP student, now MSc in Computer Science, Imperial

Kelu Yu, UROP student. Now MSc in Aeronautics, Imperial

Stepan Kolacek, UROP student: Alloy design for AM

Bogdan Dovgyy, MEng (now PhD student in the group)

Alessandro Piglione, MSc (now PhD student in the group)

Alexander Bergsmo, MSc (now PhD student with Prof. Dunne):

Zhin Mai, MEng student (Now PhD student in Oxford Univ.)

Ming-Chia Yang, MEng student: Quantifying pore size and distribution in additive manufactured metals

Yini Weng, BEng student: Microstructural conditions of AM 316 steel.

Taylor Gould, visiting BSc student from Lehigh Univ, USA: Microstructural characterisation of 3D printed 316 steel

Paul Sandman (co-supervised with Dr. Davies): Crystal plasticity of 3D printed alloys

Tristan Calvet (co-supervised with Dr. Davies): Fatigue-creep interaction of materials in fusion energy