A site visit to the AMRL at the University of Strathclyde. This facility is a leading laboratory for materials testing and development.
Dr Fiona Sillars has been part of the AMRL since 2012. She focuses on customer interface and providing technical solutions in materials testing for a range of industrial customers. Over the six years she has set up and delivered over a hundred AMRL projects, including material qualification programs and failure investigations. Fiona has expertise in a wide range of analytical techniques with particular focus on scanning electron microscopy, thermal analysis, x-ray diffraction and mechanical testing. For her PhD in Energy Storage for Electric Vehicles (Funded by EPSRCs SUPERGEN Program) she tailored porous polymer aerogels for use in activated carbon electrodes with specific materials characterisation skills developed in porosity, thermal properties and electrochemical performance. From there Fiona continued to carry out research for the Tata Steel / University of Swansea SPECIFIC project (buildings as power stations) and the MoD/EPSRC Solar Soldier project (wearable power generation). Fiona was also the UK representative for Batteries and Supercapacitors for the European Energy Researchers Alliance (EERA) for Energy Storage.