Rate My Professor Emile Greenhalgh

Professor Emile Greenhalgh is Professor of Composite Materials in the Department of Aeronautics within the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London. He holds a BSc and PhD, and is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM). From 1987 to 2003, Greenhalgh worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE, now QinetiQ) in Farnborough's Composite Structures Section, where he conducted research on polymer composites, publishing over one hundred reports and papers. Trained by fractography pioneer David Purslow, he advanced techniques for identifying crack growth directions and failure modes in compression and delamination. In 2003, he joined Imperial College London as a Reader, progressing to Professor, and now serves as Head of the Composites Centre and Director of the MSc in Composites programme. His career spans over 37 years in composites research, teaching, and administration.

Greenhalgh's research focuses on fractographic analysis of polymer composites and multifunctional structural power composites, aiming to integrate energy storage into load-bearing structures for applications in electric aircraft and vehicles. He received the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies in 2020 for his work on structural power composites. He has authored two textbooks, including 'Failure Analysis and Fractography of Polymer Composites' (2009, Woodhead Publishing), over 57 peer-reviewed journal papers with an H-index of 27 and more than 9,500 citations (Google Scholar), and holds four patents. His influence extends to failure investigations of high-profile incidents such as Formula One crashes, serving as an expert witness in litigation, and delivering fractography courses to organizations including NASA, Rolls-Royce, and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch. Greenhalgh initiated a European working group on composites fractography and leads showcases on structural power composites' impact.