Biography

About Me

I grew up in a small town in South Africa. When it came time to decide on a career, I knew that I wanted to go into engineering. However, I didn't know which kind of engineering I wanted to do. So I started browsing the different engineering degrees at one of the Universities in South Africa, and really liked the description of metallurgical engineering. I decided that this was what I wanted to study and so after visiting the two universities that offered the degree, I decided to attend the University of the Witwatersrand. Below is a timeline of my academic and professional career. What is left out of this timeline is that at the end of 2013 I married my beautiful wife and at the end of 2014 we had our first child, a daughter. My wife has now put up with me completing a Master's Degree and working towards a Ph.D. after moving our little family to another country. Without her constant love and support I would not be able to do what I have.

2006-2010

Undergraduate Degree

I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg South Africa. With the help of a Bursary from Mintek I studied Metallurgical Engineering and during the course of my studies completed two internships at Mintek over summer breaks. During these internships, one within the Pyrometallurgy Division and one within the Advanced Materials Division I discovered that my passion within the metallurgy field was with physical metallurgy.

2010-2017

Mintek

After completing my undergraduate studies I started work in the Advanced Materials Division at Mintek in South Africa. I started working with the Physical Metallurgy group within the division and worked on several projects covering topics from brass injection molding to FeAl intermetallics to ceramics for biological applications. In addition to this the division does regular service work mostly in the form of failure analysis projects, and I was involved in a significant number of these projects.

2014-2016

Master's Degree

One of the major advantages of working at Mintek is the company's commitment to further developing the staff. As a result of this I was able to receive further funding and the option to complete a part-time Master's Degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. The focus of my work was to explore the changes in the microstructure and properties of FeAl alloys produced by conventional casting and melting processes and non-equilibrium. In this case high energy ball milling for mechanical alloying of the FeAl as well as then sintering of the final powder.

2017-2021

Ph.D. Studies

Through discussions between Mintek and Texas A&M University the possibility of having a Mintek employee complete their Ph.D. studies at Texas A&M became a reality. One of the main areas for improvement that Mintek had identified was with computational materials science. Since I had shown an aptitude and interest in such work, I was offered the opportunity to attend the Computational Materials Science Summer School hosted by the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Texas A&M. About 18 months after attending the Summer School I started on my Ph.D. journey under the guidance of Dr. Arroyave. In August 2021 I was privileged to be able to obtain my Ph.D. degree.

2021 - Present

Mintek

After the successful completion of my Ph.D. studies I returned to Mintek. Since the work done during my Ph.D. focused on computational materials methods, the work that I am currently doing is to assist with the implementation of more robust computational modeling capabilities as well as to implement statistical design methods that will allow Mintek to integrate the existing experimental work with the newer computational modeling work that is being done. Currently, my personal focus is on the development of Phase Field models for use in the materials development being done at Mintek.