Researcher Focus: Professor Michael Preuss
"I believe that research and academia is about being inspired, having ideas and being creative," says Michael Preuss, Professor of Metallurgy. "It's not just about number crunching."
This vision is central to Michaels' work, and it is this creative approach that is fuelling his career in Materials Science – a career that has seen him appointed Director of the Materials Performance Centre, Deputy Director of the Nuclear Rolls-Royce Technology Centre, and a UMARI Theme Leader in the eleven years that he has been with the University.
From 1st April 2011 this approach, along with an innovative and timely proposal, will have gained him a much sought after EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, designed to help talented academics develop into internationally recognised research leaders. The fellowship will see Michael examining radiation damage to zirconium-plated metals – materials that are frequently used in nuclear reactors to protect against the extreme heat of the fission process.
He said: "With the fellowship I can really get into this field of radiation damage. The step of going into irradiation damage is a big one, because everything becomes so much more complicated when you have to handle material which is is hot. There have to be some precautions, some safety issues, so a few studies will be very difficult to do. I think it is the right challenge for this kind of fellowship though."
Background
Michael was born in Berlin but grew up in the south of Germany. He moved back to Berlin in order to take up his undergraduate study one month before the fall of the wall that divided the city for forty years. The next twelve months were a haze of celebration, and the business of serious study became less of a priority.
The opportunity to travel was an important motivational factor for Michael, and during his undergraduate degree he was offered an industrial placement in Japan, which afforded him the opportunity to spend time in Tokyo. He completed the last year of his degree in Boston, where he carried out his final research project.
Following his year in Boston Michael returned to his home country in order to work towards his PhD in Hamburg. However, his time in America had shown him an academic system that was less steeped in tradition than that of Germany.
For a while Michael wasn’t sure that he wanted an academic career at all. He said: "I was working part-time while I was a student, as a nurse in a hospital. I was torn between dealing with humans and dealing with equipment. It was only when I realised that Materials Science could take me abroad that I really got into it."
The Move to Manchester
It was at this time that an academic from the University of Manchester visited Hamburg and showed an interest in Michael's work.
"There was a lecturer that came to Hamburg from Manchester University and he was interested in my project, and then a year later, when I was looking for a post-doc position, Manchester United beat Bayern Munich. The following day I emailed him (with my CV) saying I think now is a good time to email you because you’ve just beaten a German club. He forwarded it to the whole of the Materials Science department and Phil Withers contacted me and so I came here."
During his time at The University of Manchester Michael has worked on a series of projects that have gradually led him towards the nuclear-related research that he will immerse himself in throughout his five-year fellowship. The proposal that Michael put forward to EPSRC to gain his Leadership Fellowship focuses on radiation-damaged materials, a by-product of our expanding nuclear industry.
"The UK is coming out of hibernation when it comes to nuclear research. In Manchester we have invested heavily in nuclear research but we are only now starting to get into the aspects of what happens to a material when it's inside a reactor."
Moving Forward
With a nuclear renaissance springing from the realisation that society must turn to sustainable energy sources in order to fuel technology-dependent lifestyles, now is a great time to be an academic in this field. Not least an academic with a penchant for travel, as every country across the world faces similar yet unique issues when it comes to the big questions surrounding nuclear power.
"Nowadays I travel more than I would like. It is also a different way of travelling than when I used to move around with my backpack, but what I think is important for me is that it helps me keep focus on my research. I would like to become a leader through competence, and so that requires an academic to still have enough time to really think about the research and engage with it properly, not just manage people."
Michael takes a lot of pleasure from his work, and says the most enjoyable aspect is building up a picture around a particular problem. He said: "I enjoy talking about my work, discussing it with students and writing publications where you have to focus on it. I think it's only the moment when you write a publication that you discover the gaps in your work."
Even if Michael had the opportunity to leave any kind of employment behind he would still choose to have a life in academia: "If I had a big pot of money I would still want to be an academic and continue working. It would be good sometimes to go away and travel and I would like to take my family. I have a camper van and I would like to take a year and just travel around Europe and just live the life of a gypsy for a while, but then come back with a lot of new ideas and continue my research."