Prof. Paul Mayrhofer

Professor Paul Mayrhofer is University Professor of Materials Science at the Institute of Materials Science and Technology, Technische Universiaet Wien, TU Wien, since 2012. Paul is also Guest Professor at the Central South University, Changsha, Hunan (China). He received a Ph.D. in 2001 and Habilitation in 2005 in Materials Science at the University of Leoben. Paul spent his post-doc and Erwin-Schrödinger-Fellowship at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, RTWH Aachen, and Linkoping University. His research activities focus on the development and characterization of vapor phase deposited nanostructured materials by a combination of computational and experimental material science. He has pioneered age hardening within hard ceramic thin films based on ternary nitrides and borides and given more than 40 invited presentations (including plenary and key note lectures). Paul is member of the “Junge Kurie” of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, President of the Austrian Vacuum Society, and Editor for the Elsevier Journal Vacuum. At TU Wien he also is Dean of Academic Affairs at the Faculty Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and chairs the Master Study Program for Materials Science.

Topic of Keynote: Innovative Coatings for Tooling, Machining, Aerospace, Energy and Automotive Industry

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Prof. Yuyuan Zhao

Prof. Yuyuan Zhao obtained his BEng and MSc degrees from Dalian University of Technology, and PhD degree from Oxford University. He worked as a Lecturer at Dalian University of Technology, a Research Associate at the MADYLAM Laboratory of CNRS, and a Research Fellow at Birmingham University, before he joined Liverpool University in 1998 as a Lecturer. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer, Reader and then Professor.

He is currently the Head of Centre for Materials and Structures, a Department of the School of Engineering, the University of Liverpool. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM). He is a member of the Particulate Engineering Committee, the British Composites Society Committee, the ASM/TMS Composite Materials Committee and the Editorial Board of Powder Metallurgy. He served as the President of the Liverpool & North Wales Materials Society and in a number of scientific committees of international conferences.

Dr. Zhao’s research work has covered many areas, including plasma carburising of steels, manufacturing of fibre-reinforced metal matrix composites, vacuum plasma spraying, spray forming and powder production by centrifugal atomization, and the manufacture, characterisation and applications of porous metals and metal matrix syntactic foams.

He pioneered the Sintering and Dissolution Process (SDP) for manufacturing aluminium foam, which inspired the subsequent developments of several powder-based space-holder methods for manufacturing metal foams. He further invented the Lost Carbonate Sintering (LCS) process, a more versatile and cost-effective method for producing micro-porous metals. The LCS technology has led to the creation of Versarien, a highly successful start-up company which was floated on London Stock Market in 2013.

Dr. Zhao was awarded the Ivor Jenkins Medal in 2015 by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining for his contribution to powder metallurgy in developing and commercialising innovative powder based technologies for manufacturing metal foams.

Topic of Keynote: Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer in Porous Metals Manufactured by Lost Carbonate Sintering

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