Rate My Professor Thomas Fiedler

Associate Professor Thomas Fiedler holds the position of Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and serves as Head of Discipline for Aerospace Systems within Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. He earned his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 2004 and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal in December 2007. Fiedler joined the University of Newcastle in 2008 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Geotechnical and Materials Modelling. He subsequently held prestigious fellowships, including an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2010 to 2013 and a UoN Research Fellowship from 2012 to 2014, before progressing to his current academic role.

Fiedler's research focuses on cellular materials encompassing metals and ceramics, composite materials, experimental and computational mechanics, finite element methods, lattice Monte Carlo methods, and mechanical and thermal material testing. He is actively developing new-generation cellular materials that are lightweight, strong, and multi-functional, including metal foams for alternative cooling systems, heat sinks, and energy-efficient temperature control, as well as biologically friendly surgical implants and dissolvable biomaterials reinforced with titanium for tissue, skin, and bone repair. His contributions have been recognized with the Vice Chancellor's Award for Researcher of the Year in 2009, Pro-Vice Chancellor's Awards for Excellence in Research Performance in 2013 and Excellence in Research Publications in 2010 and 2012, and earlier support from the Ministry of Education and Science, Governo de Portugal, for his project 'Investigation of Damage Evolution in Metallic Foams' in 2006. Notable publications include 'Recent Advances in the Prediction of the Thermal Properties of Metallic Hollow Sphere Structures' (2010), 'Lattice Monte Carlo analysis of thermal diffusion in multi-phase materials' (2011), 'Dynamic Behaviour of Metallic Hollow Sphere Structures' (2009), 'Miscibility Gap Alloys: A New Thermal Energy Storage Solution' (2018), and 'A thermal analysis on self-propagating high temperature synthesis in joining technology' (2011), among many others advancing knowledge in thermal properties, syntactic foams, and diffusion processes in advanced materials.