Ir. Nathan Kail

Nathan KAIL is a graduate of the Ecole Européenne des Ingénieurs en Génie des Matériaux (EEIGM), where his studies encompassed a wide range of materials throughout their entire lifecycle. During his education, he pursued a six-month internship at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC, Barcelona), followed by the completion of his master's thesis at the ULB, which focused on the experimental chemical reconstitution of archeological glass. He subsequently undertook a six-month internship at Asahi Glass Company (AGC Glass Europe), where he focused on research and development with the aim of improving glass surface wettability.Drawing on these two experiments in the field of glass science, he was awarded a FRIA grant from the FNRS for his PhD project, entitled "Multi-scale characterisation and optimisation of dissipative mechanisms during indentation of inorganic glasses".

Nathan's research project is funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS and aims to understand the structural variations occurring during the permanent deformation of glasses. This is achieved by using a combination of innovative techniques to study these variations at a very local scale. Previous studies have demonstrated that these phenomena directly impact the macroscopic resistance of glass materials, even though they develop at a very local scale. This underscores the necessity for a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms to facilitate the development of innovative damage-resistant glass materials, with a specific focus on the production of highly impact-resistant windshields.