Dr Beth Willneff
- Position: Senior Research Fellow
- Areas of expertise: surface and interface science; X-ray spectroscopy; crystallisation; catalysis; coatings; operando instrumentation; pigments; materials science; New Materialism; heritage science; SciArt.
- Email: E.A.Willneff@leeds.ac.uk
- Location: 3.14 Clothworkers South
Profile
I have been a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds since 2014. Prior to this I was an AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme Postdoctoral Research Fellow collaborating with Dr Bronwyn Ormsby at Tate after working for several years as a Senior Experimental Officer at the University of Liverpool in the Centre for Materials Discovery. My academic qualifications are in the sciences and were completed in the USA (BA Northwestern University), Germany (MSc Free University) and the UK (PhD University of Manchester).
Responsibilities
- Vesatile X-ray Spectroscopy Facility (VXSF) Manager
Research interests
My research interests are broad, revolving around materials and X-ray spectroscopy. A common theme is understanding how surfaces of materials and interfaces between materials reflect the properties of an entire object e.g. visual, chemical or mechanical. This leads me to investigate materials which are seemingly dissimilar when viewed from the perspective of their application or bulk form but which are similar at a molecular or elemental level. In the context of art and design, I am interested in how new materials can be used in contemporary practice and in establishing dialogues with artists and designers to figure out how we can harness the power of new materials to address challenges facing climate, cities, energy and food to name a few. Keywords are below.
- materials: coating, paint, textile, additive, crystal, polymorph, pigment, surfactant, plastic
- practices: heritage science, conservation science, UHV surface science, 'gaps' (e.g pressure, material, discipline), catalysis
- processes: crystallisation, catalysis
- scale: nanometre, molecule, element, surface, bulk
- analysis: X-ray spectroscopy, XPS, XANES, NEXAFS, EXAFS, synchrotron-based analytical methods, operando/in situ analysis