Meet new staff member Damien Freitas
Damien Freitas is our new Research Fellow in Extremes 鈥� The Mechanics of Condensed Matter Under Extreme Compression, joining UoMaH in April 2023.
Damien has a background in experimental petrology (geology) and characterisation at extreme conditions. He has a PhD in The transport properties of Earth鈥檚 upper mantle materials: insights from in situ HP-HT experiments from Universit茅 Clermont Auvergne in which he investigated properties rocks and magmas at extreme conditions in planetary interiors.
He has been working as a postdoc at The University of Edinburgh for the last 3 years on 4D quantification of micro-scale feedbacks in dehydrating, deforming rocks. He developed the new generation of x-ray transparent triaxial apparatus allowing in situ time resolved synchrotron microtomography investigations, a little revolution in experimental geosciences.
He has a broad experience of working at various synchrotrons, including Diamond (I12), ESRF, Soleil, SLS-Tomcat, APS and Petra III with a wide set of experimental high-pressure devices ranging from a few bars to 100 GPa.
Damien is looking forward to integrating UoMaH鈥檚 team and bring his experimental developments and expertise in extreme environments. He will mainly focus on expanding the pressure range of the new triaxial rigs for 4D investigations of dynamic rock systems, subsurface resource and its engineering solutions. He will use such developments and their adaptation to new in situ techniques and reactive materials under high pressure.
He would like to support academics to perform experiments at extremes at Harwell and national facilities.
Welcome, Damien!