Dr Felicity Freeman

Felicity is a post-doctoral research associate working on metal additive manufacturing. Her current research uses in-process monitoring capability to reduce process variation and enable localised control for material functionalisation. This builds on her industrial experience in process improvement and her skills in data analysis and signal processing. She works across the two most widely-used metal additive platforms; improving mechanical homogeneity in components built by Direct Energy Deposition through the application of closed-loop control, and creating architectured 4D metamaterials on Laser Powder-Bed Fusion, where she is exploiting material phenomena to create new types of programmable matter.

Felicity joined the department as a PhD student in 2015, working on the development of magnetically-graded steels, using the Laser Powder-Bed Fusion additive manufacturing process. This work led her to identify new routes for microstructural control in additively manufactured components, and she was awarded the University of Sheffield Brunton medal and the European Powder Metallurgy Association doctoral thesis award.

Prior to moving to Sheffield, she spent a decade as a Manufacturing Engineer at Rolls-Royce plc, working on the single-crystal casting of nickel super-alloy turbine blades. Her roles there included the certification of new products and casting process modelling, and most recently she was the Metrology Lead for the Advanced Blade Casting Facility at Rotherham, where she introduced non-contact measurement capabilities for the dimensional inspection of turbine blades. She is a Chartered Engineer with the IoM³, and holds an MSci in Materials Science & Metallurgy and MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.