Top US honour for Southampton postgraduate tribologist
Postgraduate researcher Alex Richardson has scooped the platinum prize for the best poster presentation at a prestigious US conference.
Notes for editors
He displayed his research into the role of hydrogen in the White Structure Flaking (WSF) of wind turbine gearbox bearings and spoke about it to delegates at the 70th Annual Meeting and Exhibition of the Society of Tribologists and Surface Engineers (STLE) in Dallas.
A Masters of Engineering graduate in Mechanical Engineering with Automotive from Southampton, Alex was inspired to stay on as a PhD researcher after two summer internships at the university’s National Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS).
“Wind turbines are always in the news and it’s a lively subject to research at present so I wanted to continue my work in this area at an advanced level,” he says. “Taking part in the conference was a valuable opportunity to network with leading industry figures which will be very useful in my career later on.”
“I was very pleased with Alex’s success,” comments his supervisor Dr Ling Wang “This was a major five-day conference showcasing more than 400 technical papers, application- based case studies and best practice reports, alongside discussion panels on technical or market trends.”
Earlier Alex won a Silver award poster prize at the same STLE conference in 2014 and, closer to home, a first place presentation prize at the TriboUK conference in Loughborough this year.