Rate My Professor Hannah Lomas

Dr. Hannah Lomas serves as a Research Associate in the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle, Australia, affiliated with the Centre for Ironmaking Materials Research in the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources. She earned her MChem degree in Chemistry with Study in Europe, achieving first-class Honours, from the University of Sheffield in the UK and Ruprecht Karls Universität Heidelberg in Germany in 2005. In 2006, she commenced PhD studies in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering at the University of Sheffield under Professor Giuseppe Battaglia. Her doctoral thesis, "Biomimetic pH-Sensitive Polymeric Vesicles for Gene Delivery," resulted in two review articles, one book chapter, and five research manuscripts in high-impact peer-reviewed journals. Notable outputs include the lead-authored paper "Biomimetic pH Sensitive Polymersomes for DNA Encapsulation and Delivery" published in Advanced Materials in 2007, which has received more than 380 citations. She presented this work at three international and several national conferences and collaborated with Biocompatibles UK Ltd on product commercialization, handling batch testing and quality control.

Post-PhD, Lomas joined the Nanostructured Interfaces and Materials group led by Professor Frank Caruso at the University of Melbourne's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as a Research Fellow from November 2009 to March 2011. There, she published as lead author "Polymersome-Loaded Capsules for Controlled Release of DNA" in Small and three review articles on nanoengineering polymeric assemblies. In May 2011, she was awarded the John Stocker Postdoctoral Fellowship from the CSIRO Science and Industry Endowment Fund for research on chlorine-resistant coatings for seawater desalination and secured a University of Melbourne Early Career Researcher grant worth approximately $19,000. Since July 2013, she has worked at the University of Newcastle, progressing from Research Assistant (2013-2014) and Research Associate in the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment (2014-2017) to her current role. Her research specializations include coal and cokemaking, coke strength, fractography, metallurgical coke, and tribology, spanning resources engineering and extractive metallurgy, tribology, and composite and hybrid materials. Lomas has led multiple Australian Coal Association Research Program grants totaling over $2 million, such as "Abrasion Resistance of Coke Under Hydrogen Reduction Blast Furnace Conditions" ($159,416, 2023-2024) and "Factors Underpinning the Reactivity of Coke RMDC and IMDC" ($171,436, 2022-2023). Key publications feature "Tribological Testing of Metallurgical Coke: Coefficient of Friction and Abrasion Resistance" in Energy & Fuels (2018), "Influence of elevated temperature and gas atmosphere on coke abrasion resistance" in Fuel (2024), and "Gasification and degradation mechanism of metallurgical coke" (2025). She co-supervised a PhD on coke reactivity in hydrogen-enriched blast furnace conditions, completed in 2025, and has delivered presentations at conferences like the International Conference on Sustainable Cokemaking and Ironmaking (ICSCI 2025).