Light Alloys

Ian Polmear is a graduate in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Melbourne. After some brief experience in local industry, he joined the former Aeronauitcal Reseach Laboratories in Melbourne where he later became a Principal Research Scientist and Leader of the Aircraft Materials Group. Shortly after Monash University was established in 1961, he was appointed Professor of Materials Science and was Foundation Chairman of the Department of Materials Engineering. Before retiring in 1992, he served four years as Deputy Vice-Chancellor. His research interests have focused on precipitation phenomena in aluminium alloys, trace element effects, relationships between microstructure and mechanical properties, and the development of high strength aluminium alloys for aircraft. He has had visiting appointments in England, Switzerland and Japan and was the author of the first four editions of Light Alloys which were published between 1981 and 2006. Emeritus Professor Polmear is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of the British Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. Professor StJohn is a graduate of The University of Queensland (UQ) with a BSc(Hons) and PhD in Physical Metallurgy. He has held appointments in Canada, RMIT University and CRA-Advanced Technical Development in Perth as well as a long association with UQ. From 1994 to 2008 he was with the CAST Cooperative Research Centre becoming CEO from August 2002 until 2008. He led the successful bid for the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) in 2008 and initiated the Centre for Advanced Materials Processing and Manufacturing (AMPAM) at UQ in 2009. He also successfully led an application to the Queensland State Government to fund a new building to house AMPAM which led to a further application to the Australian Federal Government for additional funding to construct the Advanced Engineering Building (AEB). He was then Chair of the Project Control Group for the construction of the AEB which was completed in 2013. Prof StJohn is currently Emeritus Professor at UQ.He has over 300 publications in journals and conference proceedings with research interests covering a broad range of topics including grain refinement and the formation of defects in castings of Al, Mg and Ti alloys. Prof StJohn was awarded the John Campbell Medal in 2014, the Materials Australia Silver Medal in 2011, the Amercian Society of Metals Henry Marion Howe Medal in 2006 and the Magnesium Technology Award by TMS in 2003. Professor Nie obtained his PhD from Monash University. After two years of postdoc fellowships in The University of Queensland and former CSIRO Division of Materials Technology, he returned to Monash to continue his research career. His research interests include design and development of light alloys including magnesium and aluminium, precipitation and hardening, processing-microstructure-property relationships and applications of advanced electron microscopy techniques. He is editor of Metallurgical and Materials Transactions, and Chair of National Events Committee of Materials Australia. He was awarded ASM International Marcus A Grossmann Young Authors Award in 2006, Monash University Inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Innovation and Collaboration in Research with Industry in 2008, and TMS AIME Champion H. Mathewson Medal Award in 2015. Dr Ma Qian is a Distinguished Professor of the School of Engineering at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University), Melbourne, Australia. His current research interests include metal additive manufacturing, powder metallurgy of light metals and alloys, solidification processing, metallic biomaterials, high entropy and medium entropy alloys, biomimetic design and lattice materials. He has published 225 peer-reviewed journal papers (nearly 100 papers on titanium), which have attracted more than 8200 Scopus citations as of November 2019 (>7300 excluding self-citations). He initiated the biennial international conference on Titanium Powder Metallurgy in 2011 (co-sponsored by Materials Australia, TiDA, TMS, JSPM and CSM) and served as the Organising Committee Chair and Conference Co-Chair for the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Additive Manufacturing (2017 and 2019). Currently, He serves as an editorial member for a number of journals, including as an Associate Editor for both Acta Materialia and Scripta Materialia. Professor Qian was also chosen as an APMI (American Powder Metallurgy Institute) Fellow in 2025, and as an ASMI (American Society of Metals International) Fellow in 2020.