Department of Mechanical Engineering

Catherine Bishop is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Associate Investigator of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, and leads the Materials Cluster@UC. She leads both an MBIE Smart Idea and a Marsden research project.

She obtained a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and worked for Westinghouse, Ebara Solar and Johnson Matthey as part of her co-op degree. Dr Bishop earned a PhD in Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her research was part of a large NSF-EU jointly funded programme (NANOAM). She moved back to the UK for an MIT postdoc on collaborative research (INCEMS) with the Department of Materials, University of Oxford and other EU partners. She held a three-year Career Development Fellowship at the University of Oxford before joining UC in 2008.

Professor Bishop is a materials scientist who collaborates internationally and across many areas of materials research. Key current international partners are at Purdue, MIT, RPI and University of Stuttgart. Current transdisciplinary collaboration includes chemical engineers, physicists, chemists and microbiologists. Her research bridges structure-property-processing-performance interrelationships in alloys and ceramics.

She was an Academic Visitor at University of Oxford (2019) and a Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2015). Dr Bishop was New Zealand partner member of HERALD EU-COST action (2015-2018), Chair of the first annual Materials@UC conference (2018) and has volunteered for MIT as an Educational Counsellor since 2015. She has convened symposia for ACerS at international conferences including MS&T 2020-present and is co-chair of the 2028 Solid State Studies in Ceramics Gordon Research Conference.

Currently completing a PhD focussed on the non-invasive measurement and interpretation of physiological signals, with a focus on the use of heart-rate variability as a measure of autonomic activity in clinical settings.

Dr Alan Caughley leads the CryoLab research team at the University of Canterbury. He has extensive experience in developing cryogenic refrigerators and refrigeration for superconductivity and small-scale nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen gas liquefaction systems.

Alan worked for 9 years in industry in product R&D, manufacturing and industrial design. He has 25 years of experience at IRL and Callaghan Innovation performing a mix of government research and consulting for industry.  His general mechanical engineering experience, combined with thermodynamics and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling, has been used by firms for diverse applications such as non-Newtonian fluid flow, heat exchangers, pumps and Stirling machines.

His current research is on the refrigeration of superconducting aircraft motors for electric aviation. He is the leader of Workstream 2, Cryogenic Systems, for the MBIE project " High power electric motors for large-scale transport'. He has authored over 40 technical papers and reports and has 7 patents.

Dr. Sanjay Choudhary is a metallurgist specializing in corrosion of metallic materials. He earned his B.Tech (2014) in Metallurgical Engineering from the NIT Raipur (India), and an M.Tech (2016) in Materials Science and Engineering from the IIT Kanpur (India). From 2016 to 2018, Dr. Choudhary worked as a scientist at TATA Steel India Ltd., where he investigated the evolution of oxide scale during hot rolling and localized corrosion in automobile steel plates and coating for steel rebars. He then moved to Australia, where he completed his Ph.D. (2022) in Materials Science and Engineering from Monash University. His doctoral research was foucsed on the element-resolved electrochemistry of passivity and passivity breakdown in conventional and emerging corrosion resistant alloys, including high entropy alloys. For his outstanding work, he was honored with the 2023 Morris Cohen Graduate Student Award by the Electrochemical Society for the best Ph.D. thesis in the Corrosion Division.

Following his Ph.D., Dr. Choudhary joined the University of Virginia (USA) as a Postdoctoral Research Associate (2022-2025). Here, he studied localized corrosion characteristics and coatings for aluminum alloys used in aerospace, employing advanced techniques such as in-situ transmission electron microscopy and finite element modeling.

Dr. Choudhary's current research interests include exploring the nano-scale phenomena of passivity breakdown in corrosion-resistant alloys. He utilizes advanced in-situ electrochemical, microscopic, and spectroscopic methods to investigate complex interfacial electrochemical processes. His research includes developing new corrosion-resistant alloys and coatings through compositional and microstructural alterations, as well as developing innovative experimental methods and tools—such as the "Metal bridge"—for studying electrochemical properties in complex geometries and under thin electrolyte layers.

I am an innovative scientist and aerospace/mechanical engineer with strong international research experience in the design, analysis and optimisation of lightweight structures with a special focus on additive manufacture and composites. I am accomplished in: computational mechanics (finite element analysis and structural optimisation), mechanical testing and composites manufacture. I have extensive experience in being a strong team member of, and also managing, industry research projects. I am a frequent presenter at conferences and seminars; accomplished in the writing of scientific publications, patent applications, technical reports and grants. I also have several years of experience at university lecturing and Masters/PhD student supervision.

David Denkenberger is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is a Penn State distinguished alumnus and is a registered professional engineer. He has 100 peer reviewed publications and is the most prolific author in the existential/global catastrophic risk field. His work has been featured in >25 countries, over 300 popular articles. He has given over 80 external presentations, including ones at 8 of the global top 20 universities.

Fundamental research activities include nonlinear dynamics of collective, resonant arrays and multi-physics interactions of coupled oscillators (e.g. fluid-structure interactions, MEMS, nano- and atomic-scale force interactions, piezo-electric actuation/sensing, acoustics, etc.). 

Application-oriented research activities are ranging from nano/micro to macro-scale systems including: AFM array technology, N/MEMS sensor technology (particularly for low noise sound and insulin detection), and, more recently, reservoir computing, then also underwater robotics to monitor waterways, bi-plane, kite and mono-wing aerodynamics, tree-traversing and -cutting robotics for safe wood harvesting.

An overarching research theme that relates to the group's ongoing work on moving objects and the fascination of sound, can be summarized as “sound and motion”. Research work on "sound and motion" is carried out in the two established research laboratories, Dynamics Systems Lab and the Listening Lab. The research group in its core team includes (on average) 5-6 PhD candidates, 1-3 Master and 4-8 Bachelor (Hons) students.

The group collaborates locally, nationally and internationally with people in the fields of mathematics, fluid-dynamics, acoustics and bio-acoustics, ecology, neuromorphic computing, computer-science, controls and mechatronics, NEMS and MEMS technology and fabrication, otolaryngology and audiology.

Lan Le-Ngoc is a member of the CryoLab research team at the University of Canterbury.

He has 35 years of experience in theoretical and experimental research on dynamic systems, machine learning, and AI in engineering, computational mechanics, instrumentation and controls, and digital signal processing. Specific applications include ocean wave mechanics and wave energy converters, cutting processes of natural materials, dynamic behavior of continuous band cutting devices, active vibration control, machine tool dynamics, dynamic properties of wood, coupled human-machine systems, and upper limb motion and strength assessment for rehabilitation, as well as mobile robot navigation.

Commercial services include finite element stress and vibration analyses; developing simulations for dynamic systems (e.g., large motion swing dynamics, stress propagation in timber poles, ocean wave energy converters, internal ballistics for gun silencers, and hydrodynamics of jet pumps); and developing instrumentation and software for data acquisition and analysis for various experiments, including the performance of boats and propulsion systems, impact testing of timber poles, wireless systems for measuring cryogenic temperatures in rotating systems, vibration analyses of wind turbines, band saws, and circular saws, and battery-powered corers for hardwood.

He is familiar with Fortran, C/C++, LabVIEW, LabWindows CVI, Visual Basic, MATLAB, Python and its scientific packages, and Julia.