Dr Beñat Gurrutxaga-Lerma CEng MIMechE FRSA

• PhD in Physics, Imperial College London, 2014
• MSc in Theory and Simulation of Materials, Imperial College London, 2011
• MEng (Ingeniería Superior) in Mechanical Engineering, University of the Basque Country, 2010
• CEng, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 2013.

Beñat Gurrutxaga-Lerma earned his first degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of the Basque Country in 2010. He then enrolled in the Centre for Doctoral Training in Theory of Simulation of Materials at Imperial College London, from which he graduated in late 2014 with a PhD in Materials Physics under the direction of Prof Daniele Dini, Prof Adrian Sutton, Dr Daniel Balint and Dr Daniel Eakins. His PhD work on elastodynamic dislocation dynamics won him the Institute of Physics’ Computational Physics Group prize in 2014.

After a year as an EPSRC Doctoral Prize fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, in 2016 he was elected a Title A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he worked as a College Fellow at the Department of Engineering of the University of Cambridge, studying time-dependencies in deformation and failure of crystalline materials. He was also a college supervisor in Engineering at Trinity College.

Beñat joined the School of Metallurgy and Materials in 2019, where his work, and remains a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. 

For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings.   

Dr Gurrutxaga-Lerma’s research focuses on developing understanding of the way microstructural processes behave under dynamic loading conditions, with aims at developing new constitutive models of materials for their use in industrial applications. Particular techniques of interest include:

Atomistic modelling

• Molecular dynamics
• lattice dynamics
• DFT

Mesoscale techniques

• Discrete dislocation dynamics
• Phase field models

Continuum level modelling

• Elastodynamics
• Thermomechanics
• Stochastic methods
• Crystal plasticity and constitutive models

• CEng, Institution of Mechanical Engineers
• Fellow, Royal Society of the Arts