MATERIALS AUSTRALIA
SEAM Profile: Dr Shareen Chan
Postdoctoral Fellow, SEAM Swinburne University of Technology project. Furthermore, having the opportunity to work across the interface of academia and industry provides Shareen with opportunities to continuously hone her skills in communicating and translating research findings to stakeholders at all levels. While all the industrial projects Shareen supports share a common base in materials engineering, each also has a different area of specialisation. The project with D&T Hydraulics and Engineering works to optimise laser cladding processes, to repair and refurbish damaged or compromised components. The project with Titomic focuses on refinement and validation of cold spray additive manufacturing processes, including novel developments with machine learning for process optimisation. Meanwhile, another project collaborating with industry involves developing effective antibacterial coatings to service the food industry.
Dr. Shareen Chan (postdoctoral fellow) working on the microstructural analysis of laser-clad coatings.
Shareen Chan is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Industrial Transformation Training Centre on Surface Engineering for Advanced Materials (SEAM) at Swinburne. Shareen is a multi-disciplinary engineer by training, with a PhD in chemical and biomedical engineering (2024) from the University of Melbourne, and an Honours in mechanical engineering (2009) from the National University of Singapore. Between degrees, she worked as an engineer then assistant laboratory manager in a quality assurance (QA) testing multi-national company. Having completed her PhD in 2024, her previous experiences working across both industry and academia made her ideally placed to take on her current role as a postdoctoral researcher at the SEAM ARC training centre. For Shareen, the attractions of the new role included the opportunity to conduct innovative research across a range of projects, while remaining firmly grounded in areas of industrial relevance. From a technical aspect, Shareen was able to apply her robust knowledge of materials engineering, processing and characterisation immediately to the projects, while growing her knowledge in other areas such as metallurgy. At SEAM, Shareen primarily supports industrial R&D projects with industrial partners D&T Hydraulics and Engineering in Mackay, Queensland, and Titomic in Mount Waverley, Victoria. In addition to her technical skills, these projects offered Shareen to put apply her project management skills to work, taking over leadership of research activities with the D&T Hydraulics 14 | SEPTEMBER 2024
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In addition to project management and conducting handson testing and analysis of results, Shareen also actively applies her own experiences and knowledge to assist with mentoring and training of other early career researchers (ECRs), and the supervision of higher degree research students (HDRs). Shareen recognises the advantages of being a part of an ARC training centre like SEAM. Such centres equip ECRs and HDRs with crucial skills for working in both academic and industrial environments. The wide variety of SEAM projects fosters innovation and the ability to work seamlessly within multidisciplinary teams. This in turn prepares graduates to become leaders in academia and industry alike, offering far-reaching benefits to the Australian economy. R&D solutions developed at the university have been applied to commercial products, and the feedback from industry partners has been extremely positive. The work done by Shareen and the team at SEAM all help to foster growth of local research talent, as well as support Australia to stay at the cutting-edge in STEM innovation. As a woman in science and engineering, Shareen is appreciative of the opportunity to promote her research and to inspire young girls that women can also excel in the STEM fields. The ARC and SEAM are thanked for providing equal opportunities to women of merit, such as Shareen, and are praised for their strong vision for diversity and inclusion.
For more information about SEAM, please visit www.arcseam.com.au/ or email seam@swinburne.edu.au WWW.MATERIALSAUSTRALIA.COM.AU