Ann and Helmut not only share the same job title, Materials & Processes Consultant, but also have a similar career path. Before her employment at Danfoss, Maltese-born Ann was first a student and then a researcher:
“Following my undergraduate studies in Chemistry and Biology at the University of Malta, I moved to the UK where I spent three years at University College London, doing a PhD in Heritage Science. The research project that I conducted there focused on degradation of colour photographs. Upon finishing my PhD, I was looking for a job, ideally in material degradation, corrosion, or something along those lines. I spotted an advertisement for a vacancy at Danfoss, applied, and got the job, approximately four and a half years ago.”
Helmut’s story is almost identical, except that it begins a few years earlier and in a different country. “I am educated in my native Germany where I first received a Master’s degree (Dipl.-Ing.) and then obtained a PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in Physical Metallurgy, both from the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg. My doctoral dissertation was on grain growth in metallic materials.
Danfoss Technology Centre
As Materials & Processes Consultants, Ann and Helmut cover related areas of expertise; Ann focuses on corrosion and surface treatments of metals, while Helmut is responsible for addressing all questions related to metallurgy. As he explains, “there is a lot of overlap between our work so if there is a corrosion-related question, Ann can deal with it, I can address it, or we simply start together and then move on as deemed best, depending on the task. And for the final conclusions we may ask one of our colleagues for help. Besides us we have another colleague specialised in corrosion, one in polymers, one in joining (mainly welding and brazing), and two in failure analysis and electronics.”
Adding to this, Ann says: “We work quite
closely together on certain tasks, when it is needed. We are all based in the same office so it is easy to approach a colleague and ask a question or discuss results. Our work does not involve much inspection on-site; we are mainly based in the laboratory or go out for meetings at the factory. This is mainly due to the fact that the parts we deal with are normally quite small so they can be sent to us, but occasionally there are situations when we go abroad.”