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Canada Research Chair in Advanced Materials for Low-Emission Energies
In an ideal world, a jet engine turbine blade would never crack, would never fatigue, would withstand as high a temperature as we can impose, and would be as light and as strong as we can imagine. In the real world, to take even partial steps towards such goals, we need a deep understanding of materials performance at many length and time scales. At nano and meso scales, the mismatch between elastic and plastic properties of each grain in a polycrystalline material results in local stress concentrations and in crack nucleation which eventually limits the life and performance of a design. Understanding the nature and the source of local stress heterogeneities and their impact on the macroscopic behaviour require development of numerical methods describing each length and time scale, approaches to bridge between methods, and the use or development of cutting edge experimental techniques to validate the numerical results.
Our research focuses on the development of different numerical methods and on the linking of them to diffraction and image based experimental techniques. At MSDL we seek to explain the effects of various environments on the performance and integrity of polycrystalline materials.
Research topics:
- Mechanics of materials across length and time scales- both modeling and experimental.
- Fatigue, fracture, and (irradiation) creep.
- Finite element, crystal plasticity, and dislocation dynamics.
- Synchrotron x-ray, neutron, and electron diffraction/imaging.
Supported by


Meet us at
Sep 2025: Multiple (Direct-) PhD and MSc positions are available: Click here for more information.
Sep 2025: MSDL welcomes two new Direct-PhD students: Mahta Mahboubi and Hala Elsharif.
Aug 2025: Khaled's paper on nanoindentation of zirconium and hydrides is out: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2025.121392
July 2025: Masoud wins the second place for his paper at PVP ASME 2025. Well done Masoud! See photos here.
March 2025: Congratulations to Saiedeh for successfully defending her PhD thesis.
Feb 2025: MSDL welcomes two new postdocs: Dr. Zahra Zaiemyekeh and Dr. Sandeep Sahni.
Selected Publications