My PhD has the title “Optimization of creep properties of irradiated vanadium alloys”. When I started to think what would I do after my second level degree in materials science in Italy, I thought of research – one of the few jobs able to give you surprises. I thought about advanced alloys for energy applications, initially nickel superalloys for aviation, until my current supervisor, Dr Enrique J. Melero from the University of Manchester, told me about vanadium alloys for the blanket of fusion reactors. There are a lot of alloys more resistant than those in vanadium, but the particularity of that material is its low activation under irradiation, i.e. it does not easily create radioactive waste. We need to improve its mechanical properties, and my PhD concerns its creep properties under irradiation, and is carried out mainly at the Dalton Cumbrian Facility, near Whitehaven, together with Dr Sergei L. Dudarev, my co-supervisor.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0923-4642