Ivan Cole

A leader in rapid discovery of materials applied to corrosion protection, nanostructures, and additive manufacturing, and combining computational materials discovery & analysis with high-throughput experimentation

Professor Cole's focus is on the discovery of new materials & processes using rapid & innovative methods. These methods combine computational materials modelling & high-throughput experimental research. The foci are on corrosion protection systems, biocompatible surfaces, nanostructures for sensing and catalytic activity, and both the refinement of metal additive manufacturing processes and the surface & surface functionalities of additive components. Professor Cole has over 30 years’ experience in research in Academia, Industry, and CSIRO, and is a recognised world leader in corrosion science & multiscale modelling of corrosion & inhibition. Prof. Cole formed & grew the Rapid Discovery & Fabrication Team (RDF) to provide the critical mass to drive this research agenda. As such, Prof. Cole is extremely active in higher degree supervision and in the development of research projects & programmes.

Professor Cole’s current work on corrosion focuses on the discovery of new inhibitors & microbially induced corrosion (MIC). The inhibitor work combines computational modelling with rapid experimentation, via robotic electrochemistry, to define the molecular features that promote effect inhibition and then to use these features to scan databases for new potential inhibitors. The MIC research is focused on new laboratory methods to replicate accurately the conditions that occur in service (currently for components embedded in soil), and on innovative methods such as Quorum Sensing Inhibitors to restrict biofilm growth. Parallel to this work, the RDF Team has a strong focus on the biocompatibility & degradation of human implants.

His work on additive manufacturing has two components. The first aims to integrate in-situ sensing & modelling of metal additive manufacturing to built virtual replicas of the same process that guide process settings & process feedback to maximize the quality of builds. The second studies the quality & biocompatibility of additive surfaces in order to estimate & improve the component functionality in service. The nanostructure work is focused on the design & fabrication of nano-dots whose surface properties are optimized for fluorescence-based sensing and catalytic reactions. The application of the nanostructure work is in both the environmental & biomedical domain.

As indicated above, all Prof. Cole’s work integrates computational modelling with experimentation. The modelling work focuses on multiscale modelling to integrate molecular features & structures with properties such as electrochemical activity that manifest themselves at larger-scale domains conventionally modelled using continuum viewpoints & analysis methods. A particular focus is how to bridge this nano-gap between molecular & continuum process with an emphasis on developing computational tools that fill this space and in developing machine learning or quantitative structure-activity relationships to cross the length scale gap. A second focus of the modelling work is the integration & synthesis of data-driven process models & physics-based process models.

• 1991 - 2016 - Various Positions within CSIRO, including Chief Research Scientist, Deputy Chief, and Acting Chief, during which Ivan worked with >50 local & international companies with a net external income of over $20,000,000.

• 1988-1991 - Team Leader with Centro-Svilluppo Materiali (Centre for Materials Development). A part of ILVA, the Italian State-Owned Steel Company.

Over thirty years' experience and an internationally recognized leader in the field of life prediction, prognostics, and design of engineered structures, specializing in Computational Materials Modeling (incl. geographical information systems - GIS), impact of & adaptation to climate change, sensor systems, and corrosion science & protective coatings. His work has included the development of IT systems for damage prognostics, IT systems to predict flood damage alongside design guides to minimize such damage, the development of protective coatings for metals and the development of green alternative materials, and micro- and nano-sensing. They have led major projects in intelligent vehicle heath monitoring (IVHM) for aerospace applications, nano-sensing for water quality, development of new coatings for galvanized steel and aluminum and the consequential relationship between building design/climate and component life, and the development of performance-based guidance standards and codes for durable buildings. They have made a significant contribution to the application of building science & material science to the conservation of cultural artefacts.

Computational Materials, Life Prediction, Corrosion, Inhibitors, Nanostructures, Sensing, Surfaces, Coatings, Additive Manufacturing, Biocompatibility

• Corrosion & Corrosion Protection including Corrosion Modelling, Oxide Formation and Passivation, Inhibitor Discovery and Mechanism, and Microbially Induced Corrosion
• Nano-Structures including Nano-dots as sensors and catalysts
• Additive Manufacturing including an emphasis on the use of sensing to refine the additive process, surface properties, and biocompatibility
• Modelling with a focus on multiscale modelling for rapid discovery and life prediction

Corrosion & Corrosion Prediction

As Principal Supervisor

• Discovery of New Corrosion Inhibitors - Effect of Droplets - Chathumini Samarawickrama
• Fast discovery of green inhibitors for Zinc - Qiushi Deng
• Corrosion Inhibition Studies of 6xxx Aluminium Alloys & Mechanisms of Film Formation - Jakeria Mohd. Rafiuddin
• Rapid evaluation assessment of corrosion inhibitors - Karim Gamaleldin

As Associate

• A Semi-Solid Agar Based Test System Mimicking Soil Environment for Studies of Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC) of Pipeline Steel - Kai Rui Wang
• Design & Development of Corrosion-Resistant & Antibacterial Coatings upon Mg alloys for Orthopaedic Applications - Ming-Shi Song
• Stress Corrosion Cracking of Additively Manufactured Passive Metals for Biomedical Applications - Shrinivas Kulkarni
• Development of Antibacterial Coatings with Ingredients from Herb Pharmacy - Vijay Sisarwal
• MIC in soil using agar system - Asma Lamin

Additive Manufacturing

As Principal Supervisor

• Cutting Tool Development Using a Novel Non-traditional Manufacturing Process - Aaqil Sameem
• Additively Manufactured Titanium Complex Structures - Magdi Morks
• In-situ Monitoring of Laser Metal Deposition for Additive Manufacturing - Jiayu Ye

As Co-Supervisor

• Towards the Fabrication of Aerospace Components using Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing - Felix Lomo
• Defects in Additive Manufacturing - Sana Awan
• Measurement of Powder Spreadability in Electron Beam Melting (EBM) Powder Bed Fusion(PBF) Systems - Tanushi De Silva
• Vision-Based Process Control in Robotic Metal Additive Manufacturing - Subash Gautam
• 3D Transient Thermal Finite Element Modelling of AlSi10Mg Alloy to Develop Correlations Between Process Parameters & Microstructural Evolution - Muhammad Azhar Shahzad
• Exploratory Analysis of the Use of Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) during Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing - Sun Yeang Chew

Nanostructures

As Principal Supervisor

• Synthesis of dots from biowaste for nanobioremediation - Sabrina Beker
• Nanostructures for enhancing photocatalytic activity - Jiajia Zhao

As Associate Supervisor

• Fabrication of Multifunctional Fluorescent Quantum Dots of Silicon Carbide for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Biological Samples - Ahmed Fahad M Almutairi

Modelling

As Principal Supervisor

• Prediction of Electrochemical Processes at Aqueous-Metal Interfaces from a Molecular Viewpoint - José María Castillo Robles
• Conformal Tooling via Additive Manufacture - Neil Wilson

As Associate

• System Integration to Ensure Workplaces Safe from Airborne Pathogens - Ayush Ranjan