Professor Daniele Dini, Imperial College London

Climate Change is the single biggest threat to present and future generations. To meet the ambitious targets for Net Zero greenhouse gas emission set by the UK government and in line with the Paris Climate Agreement requires technology mobilisation on an unprecedented scale. This will only be achieved through the rapid development and deployment of new approaches. Successful translation requires deep and coherent interactions between academia and industry, along with a shared vision and commitment. Across the proposed technological strategies for greenhouse gas reduction, limitations in efficiency, stability and lifetime are affected by key Complex Engineering Interfaces in products and systems, and their evolution in operating environments. Examples range from lubrication and cooling of interfaces in electric vehicles to the nanoscale materials and surface design for optimised energy harvesting/storage devices. The ability to understand, predict, design and control interfaces would provide a transformation in capacity to create, optimize and deploy radical technological solutions to achieve Net Zero.
Recent theoretical progress is making the accurate modelling of Engineering Interfaces a reality; the resulting methodologies provide an ideal foundation for the development of a framework in which a wide range of complex features can be captured successfully across the scales. In collaboration with Shell, my team will establish the necessary methods and tools to address the challenges of predicting the behaviour of critical interfaces and developing new design strategies.
The potential benefits of the research extend far beyond the immediate industrial collaborator and their core activities to areas where Engineering Interfaces are critical; we will seek to demonstrate this by engaging partners from industry and medicine. The generic tools and scientific developments of this programme will also impact other sectors, including nuclear, aerospace, biomedical technologies, consumer goods and food industries. For example: i) in the nuclear sector, insights into mechanochemical materials/interfaces activation will lead to confidence in long-term predictions and design of better materials; ii) in medicine, enhanced materials, and control of drug/tissue and surgical probes/tissue interactions will lead to improved clinical outcomes for patients; iii) in healthcare and consumer goods, advances in molecular-based design will lead new products and the development of antibacterial surfaces.