Welcome to our new Academics and Departmental Lecturers

Welcome to our new Academics and Departmental Lecturers:

Dr Tim Hageman joined the Department in January 2024 as Departmental Lecturer and 1851 research fellow. Prior to this, he was a research associate at Imperial College London. He obtained his PhD at the university of Sheffield, developing multi-scale models for poroelasticity. His research focusses on developing novel finite element schemes for a wide range of multi-physics and multi-scale problems, among which hydraulic fracturing processes within ice sheets, hydrogen embrittlement and failure of metals, and corrosion processes. These applications include the interactions between materials themselves and the environment they are contained within. As a result, numerical schemes are being developed to capture not only accurate solutions for the behaviour of the material itself, but also for the changes and response of the environment.

Lilly (Dong) Liu is Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering with a Tutorial Fellowship at Trinity College. Her research focuses on the deformation and fracture of advanced structural materials used in nuclear fission/fusion, aerospace and hydrogen storage applications. Before joining the Department in January 2024, she was Associate Professor in the University of Bristol where she was lead of Materials and Devices Theme in the School of Physics. Her expertise lies in the area of real-time, high temperature multiple-scale microstructural and mechanical characterization of advanced materials for applications such as nuclear reactor core component and target materials for large particle accelerators, aeroengine components, solar power tower systems and fusion, as well as heterogeneously integrated semiconductor materials such as GaN-on-diamond for high power electronics.

Dr Daniele De Martini is a Departmental Lecturer in Mobile Robotics at the Oxford Robotics Institute. Daniele has been working in the Mobile Robotics Group (MRG) at the Oxford Robotics Institute since 2019, first as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant. Daniele joined Pembroke College in 2022 as Part-time Stipendiary College Lecturer. Daniele’s research focuses on creating intelligent, autonomous robots that can work with or for humans, mainly by applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. He has worked on navigation and scene understanding, including mapping and localisation, detection, and segmentation, using different sensing technologies – from vision to laser to radar – and in diverse environments and conditions – from central Oxford to snowy Highlands. Another prominent research interest is in the interplay of robotics and smart infrastructures to allow sensing and computing to be shared and elastically allocated for safe operation. 

Jesus Lizana is Associate Professor in Space Heating and Cooling with a non-tutorial Fellowship at Wolfson College. Previously to his appointment at Oxford, he has lectured and conducted research at the University of Seville (Spain), the University of Edinburgh, the Technical University of Munich (Germany), Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal), and the Spanish National Research Council. With a unique experience profile in architecture and engineering, he leads the research on Zero-Carbon Space Heating and Cooling at ZERO Institute. Lizana is engaged in many research initiatives and has received several prestigious and extensive grants. He supports the interdisciplinary research in the Future of Cooling Programme of the Oxford Martin School. He also serves as a board member and scientific reviewer for many leading journals, conferences and research programmes.

Dr Jack Umenberger is a Senior Research Fellow in Control of Zero Carbon Energy Systems with the Department and the ZERO Institute. He joined the University of Oxford in 2023 as a departmental lecturer with the Control Group. Previously, he has held postdoctoral research positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2019-22) and Uppsala University, Sweden (2017-19). He received the PhD from the University of Sydney in 2018 for his work on data-driven modeling of dynamical systems. His current research interests lie at the intersection of control theory, optimisation, and machine learning, with applications to energy systems, robotics, and automation.