The IOM3 Defence, Safety & Security Group provides a forum for the exchange and dissemination of information, knowledge and state-of-the-art practice on all aspects of defence, safety and security materials. The group focusses on all technical, educational and professional issues relating to defence, safety and security materials. These issues are relevant to IOM3 members across all disciplines, and will cover all aspects relating to production, design, fitness-for-purpose, applications, cost, and sensitivity in respect of national/personal security and safety.
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Meet the Defence Safety & Security Group Leadership Team
Duncan Broughton
Duncan Broughton (CEng, CSci, FIMMM, CChem FRSC) joined the Plastics & Rubber Institute as an early career materials chemist working on various composite materials, fibers and resins, in the Carbon & Graphite, later Composite Development team at the then AWRE after completing his Chemistry degree at Durham University and a masters at Newcastle. Duncan has had a long career in defense materials researching initially carbon-carbon materials, manufacturing techniques such as pultrusion and multi-axis filament winding, and some ‘unique’ composite structures. In the mid-90s he moved tracks to undertake a period of research in inorganic chemistry (2001 PhD) and then into the management of the Materials Development Group at AWE. He initiated some of the early computational chemistry, later returning to manage and expand the modelling team. Duncan has been heavily involved in career development, sponsoring graduate projects, managing two of our accreditation programmes, and leading interactions with our US colleagues. He has supported the professional bodies, especially IOM3 and RSC, over the last two decades and would encourage others to do likewise. Outside of work Duncan is a life member of the National Trust and The Royal Horticultural Society a long-time grower of Carnivorous Plants.
Debra Carr
Debra Carr (CF CEng, FIMMM, FCSFS) has been a member of the Defence Safety & Security Leadership Team (and its predecessor) since 2010. She completed a HND in Materials Technology and BSc(Hons) in Materials Science at Sunderland Polytechnic followed by a PhD from The University of Birmingham on the compression properties of carbon fibre reinforced composites (supported by Courtaulds and RAE). Debra joined the British Composites Society as a PhD student in the mid-1980s and subsequently transferred to IOM3.
Debra joined the Stores and Clothing Research and Development Establishment (SCRDE which became the Defence Clothing and Textiles Agency, DCTA) in the early 1990s as a materials scientist working on personal ballistic protective equipment. In 1998, Debra transferred to academia as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College (paintings on canvas with reference to the Turner Collection) followed by academic positions at The University of Otago (Clothing and Textile Sciences) and Cranfield University at The Defence Academy (Impact and Armour Group). Her academic record can be found here. Her research interests include body armour and helmets, conservation science, textile science, forensic textile science and wound ballistics. In 2018, Debra joined DASA where she helps Scottish innovators secure funding to accelerate innovative ideas that benefit HM Armed Forces and National Security.
Debra’s career highlight has been meeting Shaun the ESA Astronaut at the 2023 UK Space Conference (see attached photograph).
Steve Bleay
Steve Bleay graduated from the University of Bath in 1988 with a BSc in Materials Science, and completed a PhD on ‘Microstructure and micromechanics of the interface in glass and glass-ceramic matrix composites’ at Bath in 1991. After a post-doctoral contract Steve joined the Defence Research Agency in Farnborough in 1993, working on radar absorbing materials, self-healing composite materials and manufacture of hollow carbon fibres. He was Principal Scientist and Technical Lead for low observable aircraft materials before joining the Police Scientific Development Branch in 2003.
During 15 years at the Home Office working on fingermark development and imaging, Steve conducted research into several techniques that can now be found in the Home Office/Dstl Fingermark Visualisation Manual. He is also one of the principal authors of the Fingermark Visualisation Manual, the Dstl/Home Office Fingermark Visualisation Source Book and the textbook Fingerprint Development Techniques – Theory and Application. On the integration of the Home Office Centre for Applied Science & Technology into the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory, Steve moved to academia in September 2018. He has been a Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University since January 2019 and has continued to collaborate with academic colleagues worldwide on fingerprint research. In addition to teaching and research, Steve also conducts assessments of fingerprint enhancement laboratories as a contracted Technical Assessor for UKAS and acts as a Forensic Adviser to the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory.
Prof Bala Vaidhyanathan
Prof Bala Vaidhyanathan (Vaidhy) is a Professor of Advanced Materials and Processing and was the Associate Dean for Enterprise (for 9 years) at the School of Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering at Loughborough University (LU). He leads the very active Advanced Ceramics Research Group in the Materials Department and has over 200 peer reviewed publications (>5280 citations, h-index 40), named inventor on 17 patents, delivered >60 Plenary/keynote/invited presentations in international and national conferences and written six book chapters. He is the Editor of Advances in Applied Ceramics, a UK journal published by Sage & IOM3 and on the Editorial Board for four International Materials Journals. He held/holds >47 research grants totalling >£30.5M funded by EPSRC, UKRI, Innovate UK, Royal Society, DSTL, Government/Charity organisations and many of these are with multi-partner, multi-institutional involvements and 40 of them had direct industrial steer and contribution. Vaidhyanathan has pioneered the development of energy efficient microwave, flash and hybrid methods for the advanced processing of functional ceramic materials and Loughborough is currently regarded as one of the world leaders in the utilization of these techniques and hosts the largest AM ceramics group in UK. With over 20 years of experience, he is one of the leading exponents in the field of microwave-assisted materials processing, additive manufacturing (AM) of advanced ceramics, and pioneered the development of hybrid two stage sintering and gradient flash sintering facility for the processing of oxide and non-oxide materials and devices. The range of products worked on has been very wide, from traditional to nanostructured materials, for energy, electronic, defence and healthcare applications. Vaidhy is the Director of LMCC (Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre), a specialised facility for state-of-the-art materials characterisation in all length scales from surface to bulk, from microscopic to macroscopic structure determination, and his team commands significant analytical expertise on structure-property correlations. Vaidhy is also the University Special Envoy for Internationalisation (India) and successfully formalised many R,T,I collaborative links between LU and premier Educational Institutions and Industries in India.
