An interview with Dr Christine Chalk who retired this month from Royce at Cranfield University

Dr Christine Chalk is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Manufacturing and Materials at Cranfield University and is the Technology Platform Lead: Coatings for Extreme Environments for the Royce at Cranfield.  She came to Cranfield in 2006, initially joining the National High Temperature Surface Engineering group as a technical member of staff, gaining wide experience of the field and then moving into research and academic positions.

Christine is retiring from her role this month and we spoke to her, and to some of her colleagues from the Surface Engineering and Precision Centre, about her career highlights and some of her personal and professional impacts.

Hi Christine, thanks for talking to me!  First question, can you tell me a bit about your current role and your field of expertise?

I work in the Surface Engineering and Precision Centre at Cranfield. My role focuses on coatings - the deposition of coatings for use in extreme environments, so this may include high temperatures, up to 1400°C, or exposure to other damage such as wear or chemical attacks. We design, tailor, deposit and test highly engineered coatings. So very often it's not just a single layer, it may be a multi-layer or multi-material coatings to enable a component to operate in extreme environments.

I mainly work with Rolls Royce, in particular on the gas turbine part of their engines, but part of my time is also working with other industries

What has been your career path up to your current role?

After my PhD and I took up a position with a company called Fulmer Research, which was an independent research organisation. This was back in the 70s / 80’s and I worked there for over 10 years. I was  working on heat storage media for storage radiators and also in high temperature coatings for rocket thrusters. So quite a challenging environment and, to be honest, the science hasn't moved on that much in in the latter case. After that I raised a family and took up various part time roles.

After that, I fell into further education and was teaching numeracy, literacy and IT to post 16’s who had struggled with school or had left school without a formal qualification as their lives very often were very challenging. That was a huge learning experience and I got my post 16 teaching qualifications at that time.

I then saw a job advertised at Cranfield and came here initially as a member of technical staff and then gradually I became a researcher and I am now a senior research fellow here.

Over your time at Cranfield, what would you say is your career highlight or what are you most proud of achieving?

In many cases, I would say getting patent or patent applications with industry because that is a real measure of success. It isn't just a one-off experiment in the lab, it’s that there is some mileage in your work and that industry can see that.

Very often the patents have come about because three years previously you shared some results that didn't seem to agree with what you might expect. But you shared them, tried to understand why they came out like this and then the seed of an idea began to form.

So, I think just noticing details and then seeing that there is a benefit to them.

You have worked at Cranfield for over 18 years now, what would you say has been your favourite thing about working here?

It’s definitely the people and the students and the fact that so many people go the extra mile to help.

I know you have been working with the Royce Institute at Cranfield for the last 2-3 years as well.  Could you tell me about some of the most interesting projects or questions that you've had to tackle in that time?

I think it has been applying the coatings we can produce in different scenarios and seeing new opportunities for their exploitation.  People turn up with different materials requiring special coatings and we try to help them

And again, it's the conversations we've had with people that have been great. We had a super student come from Manchester who was really entertaining. He'd started off doing an English literature degree, then got a job as an apprentice and worked his way up and there he was doing a PhD.  He reached out to us to help him test some of his material systems and that was very rewarding.

Is there anything you wish you could have finished or or found out the answer to over your career?

That's a tricky one. Cranfield have just embarked on big programme on sustainable aviation.  I think in the past we've been quite conservative in our exploration and exploitation of material systems with which we are reasonably familiar, but now we've just been given the opportunity to push the boundaries a lot more.

One of the driving forces for being more sustainable is to increase the efficiency of an engine, so either you can run it hotter, which has the advantage that it's a cleaner burn, or you can operate it for longer, which means that it is more sustainable. This project will look at ways to do this. And of course, we are not only talking about using sustainable aviation fuels, which are already in operation in relatively small quantities, but moving on to hydrogen. There will definitely be opportunities to see whether the types of coating systems we work with would be valid if we're combusting hydrogen in place of hydrocarbon fuels. I think that would be really exciting to work on and see through to the end but is something to hand over to the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Your colleague Luis Isern Arrom will be taking over your role. I know you've had a long time working together so he will know exactly what needs to happen, but do you have any advice that you could offer to your successor?

There are lots of demands and everything is urgent, whether it's students or delivering a project, and they're all time constrained so an important thing to do is to prioritise and sometimes saying no.  We need creative solutions for today’s challenges and these can take time to mature.

What plans do you have for your retirement?

Well, we have two grandchildren already and about to have a third. Clearly, I will be spending more time with the family. We have an old house and a large garden. I'm very interested in gardening and I want to be more scientific, moving forward!

I'm also thinking about things like the University of the Third age, local history, geology, wildlife and I love walking. So, yes, I think, I will be quite busy!

Thank you for your many contributions and best of luck for your retirement Christine!

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