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Lecturer in Digital Manufacturing of Advanced Materials
Biography
Maximilian Besenhard is a physicist by training and switched to chemical and pharma engineering for his PhD which focused on continuous pharma production at the Institute of Process and Particle Engineering in Graz. After ~6 years working for Siemens and the Research Centre Pharmaceutical Engineering in Austria, he returned to academia joining UCL in 2016. During his 5 years as a PDRA, he worked on the continuous syntheses of noble metal and magnetic nanoparticles for biomedical applications, multiphase and high temperature flow reactors synthesising advanced functional materials, sensor technology and real-time material characterisation, nature inspired nanomaterial tuning, and hybrid models combining mechanistic models with machine learning strategies to develop digital twins for HPLC. In 2021 he joined the University of Leeds as a lecturer (still visiting lecturer) and re-joined UCL in April 2022 as a lecturer in Digital Manufacturing of Advanced Materials and programme lead for the same named MSc.
Teaching Summary
When teaching I showcase examples of academic and especially industrial relevance, i.e., “real-world” applications and problems to highlight the importance of the topics covered. I believe that effective learning in the field of engineering does not mean reproducing what is seen in class but to develop a deeper understanding to solve existing and new problems. Therefore, it has always been my priority to help students understand the fundamentals of each discipline. I am the programme lead for the new MSc programme Digital Manufacturing of Advanced Materials.
Research Summary
He has an interdisciplinary experimental and computational research background focussing on material science and pharmaceutical process development. His industrial and academic work has always combined experimental and computational work covering multiple areas including process scale-up, process control, particle technology, process analytical and sensor technology, reactor engineering, bioprocesses, flow chemistry, nanomaterials, material synthesis, as well as crystallisation and chromatography.
The new area of digital manufacturing imposes research challenges at several frontiers which are the focus of his current research. Examples are i) Hybrid models for Artificially Intelligent systems combining mechanistic models where possible with machine learning strategies where not, ii) autonomous material discovery and process optimisation, iii) system engineering approaches to manufacture precisely engineered functional materials at small and large scales, iv) novel reactor designs facilitating novel synthetic procedures which yield novel (nano) materials.
Education
2014
PhD, Chemical Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
2011
MSc, Technical Physics, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
2009
BSc, Technical Physics, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Professional Affiliations
- Affiliate member of IChemE
Publications
- Besenhard M.O., Panariello L., Kiefer C., LaGrow A., Storozhuk L., Perton F., Begin S., Mertz D., Thanh N. T. K., Gavriilidis A. (2021), “Small iron oxide nanoparticles as MRI T1 contrast agent: scalable inexpensive water-based synthesis using a flow reactor”, Nanoscale, vol. 13, pp. 8795-8805
- Besenhard M.O., LaGrow A., Hodzic A., Kriechbaum M., Panariello L., Bais G., Loizou K., Damilos S., Margarida Cruz M., N. T. K. Thanh, Gavriilidis A. (2020), “Co-Precipitation Synthesis of Stable Iron Oxide Nanoparticles with NaOH: New Insights and Continuous Production via Flow Chemistry”, Chem. Eng. Jour., 125740
- Besenhard M.O., Dai J., Pankhurst Q.A., Southern P., Damios S., Storozhuk L., Demosthenous A., Thanh N. T. K., Dobson P., Gavriilidis A. (2021), “Development of an in-line magnetometer for flow chemistry
- Besenhard, M.O., Neugebauer, P., Scheibelhofer, O., Khinast, J.G. (2017). “Crystal Engineering in Continuous Plug-Flow Crystallizers,” Cryst. Growth Des., vol. 17, pp 6432–6444
- Besenhard, M.O., Neugebauer, P., Da-Ho, C., Khinast, J. G. (2015), Crystal Size Control in a Continuous Tubular Crystallizer. Crystal Growth & Design, vol. 15, pp. 1683–1691