Rate My Professor George Franks

Professor George Franks is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering within the Melbourne School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne, where he leads the Ceramics and Minerals Processing Group. He serves as Co-Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Minerals. His academic background includes an undergraduate degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, followed by seven years working in the ceramics industry. He earned his PhD in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997 and subsequently moved to Australia. Franks' research interests center on ceramics and minerals processing, encompassing suspension rheology, ceramic powder processing, materials modelling, and minerals processing. Key areas include the development of novel polymeric reagents for solid-liquid separation and froth flotation, processing of complex shaped ceramics and composites with unique microstructures such as multi-scale porous ceramics, 3D printing of ceramics for biomedical implants, ultra-high temperature ceramics for aerospace applications, lightweight ceramic armour, colloid and surface chemistry, alumina surfaces, and particle scale simulations.