Professor Chris Race
School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering
UKAEA Chair in Fusion Materials
Royal Society University Research Fellow
Henry Royce Institute Research Area Lead for Modelling and Simulation
Co-Director EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Developing National Capability for Materials 4.0
Full contact details
School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering
Sir Robert Hadfield Building
Mappin Street
91Ö±²¥
S1 3JD
- Profile
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Professor Chris Race is the UKAEA Chair in Fusion Materials and a Royal Society University Research Fellow within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of 91Ö±²¥. His research group uses the tools of atomistic simulation to investigate the behaviour of a variety of materials and material evolution processes.
Before Chris joined 91Ö±²¥ in December 2023, he was a Dalton Research Fellow and then Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Materials at the University of Manchester. Before that, he spent three years in the Department of Computational Materials Design of the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research (Eisenforschung) (MPIE) in Dusseldorf Germany, latterly as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. Chris completed his PhD in 2010, in the Department of Physics, Imperial College London, under the supervision of Adrian Sutton and Matthew Foulkes.
"I am a physicist by training and a materials scientist by inclination. I am attracted to materials science by the links it draws between the behaviour of real materials - things we experience and use in our everyday macroscopic lives - and what happens in the microscopic world of atoms and electrons. Materials science involves the application of fundamental theories of physics to solve real-world problems. As a bonus, these problems are often extremely complex, involving a hierarchy of processes across a range of length and time scales. To model them we need to use a broad range of tools, each with its own strengths and weaknesses."
- Research interests
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My work uses computer simulations to understand why materials behave the way that they do. Much of the behaviour of real materials in our everyday lives originates at the scale of atoms, propagating upwards through the complex hierarchical structure of the material. For example, the useful lifetime of a component in a fusion reactor depends ultimately on the way fast neutrons from the fusion reaction rearrange the atoms in the crystal structure. By understanding the behaviour of atoms via simulations, we can help to steer the development of improved materials, better suited to meet the challenges faced by society.
Key research interests:
- Microstructural evolution in nuclear materials
- Electronic effects in irradiation damage
- Mechanisms and kinetics of grain boundary migration
- Publications
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Featured publications
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All publications
Journal articles
- . Materialia, 36, 102163-102163.
- . Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A, 54(5), 1758-1775.
- . Materials Science and Technology.
Conference proceedings papers
- . Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation VI, 16 June 2024 - 22 June 2024.
Preprints
- Teaching activities
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MAT4900/6900 Advanced Reactor Systems