#MondayMaterials Episode 9 – Dr Joao Quinta da Fonseca
Meet the Department 28 September 2015
Dr Joao Quinta da Fonseca first came to my attention when I edited an article about his research for the School of Materials website. While I had to Google terms like ‘deformation at the nanoscale’ and ‘polycrystalline plasticity of austenitic stainless steel’, I found the basic ideas of his work to be both intriguing and important. So I sent him a quick email.
Sitting in his office to interview him, I learnt that he was just as interesting as I’d assumed – with the added bonus of some very entertaining sarcasm! I hope you enjoy reading about him as much as I enjoyed interviewing him:
Could you please explain your research, for the layman, in ten sentences or less?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgk-Zx6O_uQ]I’ll try!
So my research is on metals and I try to understand really how metals deform, from a very fundamental point of view. But very much looking at the application of that work.
So, at one end I might be using computers to try to understand how the atoms move past each other when, say, a titanium alloy is deformed, or is in service, or is in an aeroplane. But the other day I might be meeting with the engineers that are actually designing and building and testing these jet engines, and working with them to try and make the materials better, to try and understand how current materials work, and so on.
So that’s really what I do, I work on metals. Which a lot of people find quite disappointing! (Ed: given that sarcasm doesn’t always come across when written down, we should point that Joao smiled and laughed at this point!)
Can you tell us a bit about how your research can benefit the general public?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlB8_XyxCoo]So, I think it’s very easy to see how metals benefit the public because you use metals in everything.
In fact, it’s also very easy to take it for granted – it’s one of those things. Steel; everyone thinks we know everything there is to know about steel, but steel is used for everything! From cars, to aeroplanes, to trains. Everything!
And especially things where you need very high temperatures or you need very high performance. Like power plants or jet engines. Metals are just – actually, they’ve got almost magical properties. And I think people take them for granted.
But imagine if you only make a ten percent improvement in any of these metals. Because they are used everywhere, the impact is just humongous. But one of the problems is, because these are things that we’ve used for so long, it’s very hard to eke out those ten percent improvements. And people say it’s not very exciting, in some terms.
I think it’s not only exciting, but the potential impact it can have is just tremendous. So it makes it a very rewarding area to work in.
And how did you first get interested in your research area?

As a kid I wanted to be a scientist. Whenever I went to school, or on the walk to school, I always wanted to know why – why, why, why, why, why? I was one of those why kids. I just didn’t know what scientist I was going to be.
So I went to school and I was really into physics. I thought I was going to do particle physics, nuclear physics. And then when it came to going to university I couldn’t decide. I applied to do maths, physics, chemistry, engineering. My father had said at some point that engineers were very useful people and I had a feeling that being useful is probably a good thing to be.
In the end I couldn’t quite decide so I ended up doing materials science. So I’m a materials science graduate.
But at that time I wasn’t really interested in metals, per se. They seemed like quite boring materials. The first thing I was really interested in was electroceramics, the stuff we make computers and phones out of. I really thought it was amazing – how these scientists had come up with the materials by just coming up with abstract models for what’s going on in terms of electrons – things that we can’t even see! And they were able to get these things out and develop these amazing devices.
So that’s what I was going to do. And then I went through a stage where I thought ‘what about strength? What about making things strong? Isn’t that so much more noble a pursuit? This electronics stuff is like wizardry. What about strength?’
So I was interested in composites then. Because composite materials, everyone knows about them, they seem quite exotic. And that’s what I did my PhD in. And that’s what actually brought me to Manchester. But when I came to Manchester there were top metallurgists in the department at the time – really, really excellent people. And as I learned more and more I discovered that metals and alloys are composites, they’re just amazing composites that we don’t really understand. And the kinds of things I was interested in with electronics still applied. But in a very different and challenging way. So I really got into it and I started learning more and more about it.
And then there are the challenges; metallurgy’s been around for a long time, so there’s a lot of knowledge, so you can look like a fool very easily. But that kind of inspired respect in me – I really decided that this was a subject worth learning.
And by using all the fancy new techniques that we have now, we can really look at it in a different way. That’s something that everyone takes for granted, and I quite like that. It seems like a noble pursuit and it’s very interesting. Always challenging and always fascinating.
And I can be a scientist on one end, and an engineer at the same time. So my father’s happy because he thinks I’m useful and I get to play around and think about why all the time. It’s nice.
Great answer, thank you. Can you tell us who or what first inspired your interests in science and engineering?
Well, I think I always wanted to know what was going on.
But I think very important things when I was growing up were my teachers. I had good science teachers – they always encouraged us and they explained to me that science wasn’t just about getting equations right. That it’s actually a way to understanding why things work and giving a meaning, if you like, to what you see around you. I really liked that.

And they were always happy and enthusiastic about it. So in a way, I always got the feeling that science is cool and it’s beautiful. Because it is. It was never a chore, it was always something I enjoyed doing.
What about your interests outside of work? What do you like to do when you’re not working on metals?
I work all the time! That’s all I do – I just work, work, work!
The School’s going to see this, right?
No – I always did a lot of sport. I used to play squash quite regularly; I used to play squash in the leagues around here. It was a really nice way of getting to know Manchester – there’s little clubs everywhere. So it was nice to do that.
But now I’ve stopped, because of some injuries and so on, and now I’m doing running. I live in the moors, in Huddersfield. There are lots of nice hills around there, and I like running through the hills and getting wet and mucky! It’s nice.
Can you tell us a bit about how being here in Manchester has benefited your work?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbTC7TtMKIo]I think Manchester, for me, has two things of significance.
The first thing is the metallurgists that were here when I got here, they were really inspiring. They were really top people and I learned so much from them. So the work that we do now we think is quite nice and quite good, but really we owe it to them because we learned everything we know from them. Metallurgy is quite an established discipline, and if you don’t have that leg up you can look like a fool for many, many years until you get there. And I got an advantage by not doing that.
The other thing is, of course, all the good people that are here and make this place so wonderfully equipped. All the kit that I want to play with, any kind of work that I want to do, I can just go down and use it.
And that’s the other thing that is unusual – I can just go down and use it. Nobody keeps the kit to themselves and says ‘oh, this is mine, you can’t use it’. So there’s this kind of spirit of collaboration, which I’ve actually come to realise is quite rare. But without it I wouldn’t have been able to do the work that I’ve done so far, and that’s the research.
The environment is really nice. And that’s something that is worth preserving at all costs – I think that’s what really makes Manchester unique: this environment where we all work together.
And yeah, may long it continue.
Brilliant – thanks for a great interview, Joao. And we certainly don’t think metals are boring or disappointing – quite the opposite in fact.
Hope everyone enjoyed episode 9. We’ll be hitting double figures next week when we talk to Rachel Parker-Strak, a Design, Fashion, and Business PhD student and lecturer. See you then!
AeroplanesEngineeringMaterials ScienceMetallurgyMetalsPhysicsRunningSchool of MaterialsScientistSquash. ManchesterThe University of Manchester
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