Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland visited Trondheim and NTNU on Wednesday (15. October) to present the national budget.

Dr. Chunan Li successfully defended his PhD thesis: “Solute clustering and early-stage precipitation in Al-Mg-Si alloys”, on September 26th, 2025. The prescribed title for the trial lecture was “Development of High-Strength and Heat-Resistant Aluminium Alloys Based on Additive Manufacturing”. The doctoral work has been carried out at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, where Professor Yanjun Li has been the candidate’s supervisor. Senior Researcher Calin Daniel Marioara, SINTEF and Professor Randi Holmestad, Department of Physics have been the candidate’s co-supervisors.

On August 12. we had the pleasure of hosting a visit from the AMAG Austria Metal. The background is an initiative form Hydro, trying to establish some more collaboration between Hydro, AMAG, NTNU (and SINTEF) and academic institutions I Austria (notably University of Leoben).

The Trondheim International Summer School on Aluminium Alloy Technology - NTNU  (ISSAAT) was organized at NTNU 16th-20th June 2025. The school had 43 participants and 18 lecturers from 9 different countries ( Norway, Japan, Austria, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, UK and France). The participants were MSc and PhD students, and also from aluminium industry. 

Dr. Hassan Moradi Asadkandi successfully defended his PhD thesis: “Anisotropy of Polycrystalline Metals and Lattice Structures: An Open-Source Crystal Plasticity Framework”, on June 6th 2025. The title of the trial lecture was: “Flow localization and formability in metal plates: Experiments and modelling”. The doctoral work has been carried out at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with Professor Bjørn Holmedal the candidates’ main supervisor and where Associate Professor Tomas Manik, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Odd Sture Hopperstad, Department of Structural Engineering and Research Scientist Baptiste Reyne, SINTEF Industry, have been the candidates’ co-supervisors.

The SFI PhysMet consortium spring meeting was organised at Sunndalsøra 21.- 22. May 2025, with Hydro Aluminium as the host.  Altogether ~60 participants from NTNU, SINTEF, IFE and our industrial partners attended the meeting.

During the week March 31- April 4. we had the pleasure of have Professor Frederic Barlat as a visitor at NTNU/SINTEF. Barlat holds a PhD in Mechanics (1984) from the Grenoble Institute of Technology, and he worked at Alcoa Technical Center near Pittsburgh PA, where he conducted scientific research on aluminium technologies for more than 20 years. In 2007 he joined Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in the Republic of Korea as a Full Professor. Barlat is currently an Emeritus Professor at POSTECH, and an Invited Researcher at the University of South Brittany in Lorient, France.