Dr Ilaria Corni, Head of Operations and Principal Consultant, leads on client projects that involve experts within the University of Southampton but outside the core nC2 team, identifying and assembling the right combination of specialist knowledge for every job. A talented project manager, she also has oversight of all nC2’s activities as well as managing the consultancy’s marketing and finances.
Ilaria joined the team in 2016 having worked as a researcher at the University of Southampton since 2009. She has a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy, a PhD in materials science from Imperial College London, and is a Member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3).
Dr Ilaria Corni
Tell us more about your role at nC2
The leadership team: Dr Ilaria Corni with nC2’s Director, Professor Nicola Symonds
I’m the lead for nC2’s ‘Powered By’ projects, liaising with clients who need expertise that is not within our team and matching them with theright specialists within the University of Southampton. I remain the main point of contact throughout and carry out all the project management for these projects. This newer offering from nC2 helps us to deliver so much more for industry, enabling us to draw expertise from a bigger field and utilise the University’s advanced facilities. I also do literature reviews, to help clients understand the state of the art in the area they are working in, and what their best next steps might be.
As Head of Operations, I’m fully responsible for nC2’s finances and marketing, share business planning with our Director, Nicola, and keep an eye on all the projects and activities within nC2.
I enjoy having lots of different hats – it’s really varied and I like having an overview of everything that’s going on within the team. It’s also extremely satisfying knowing that the results we produce make a difference and help our clients to make decisions and move ahead with their research, planning and design.
Because I no longer do lab work myself, I can be involved in many more projects and therefore the impact I generate is so much greater.
Why is the project management side of your role so crucial?
I know how important it is for our clients to have the answers to the questions they ask us, so it’s essential to do things to deadline and complete our projects as efficiently and as quickly as possible. Good project management is key to doing that, and I enjoy that side of things very much.
Preparing cross-sections for inspection
What originally made you want to go into an engineering/scientific career?
At school, I was drawn to scientific subjects like maths, biology, and chemistry because they offered clear answers and explained how things work. That sense of certainty appealed to me, but what really sparked my interest was how these subjects explain the world around us and open doors to solving real problems.
Tell us about your early research career
My PhD focused on the deposition of coatings using electrochemical techniques and their characterisation, which is useful in my work at nC2. As part of this research I wrote a literature review, entitled Electrophoretic deposition: From traditional ceramics to nanotechnology, that has been cited more than 650 times.
After my PhD I joined the University of Southampton as a research fellow at the national Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS). I worked on research into the impact and the erosive resistance of coatings for body armour, and did some consultancy work for external clients.
After four years I was seconded to Perpetuum Ltd, a University spin-out company that was developing self-powered vibration sensors to monitor the condition of train bearings. It is a fantastic system that helps train companies maintain their stock to avoid serious problems, or if necessary take a train out of service to avoid a catastrophic failure. My work focused on forensic engineering of rail bearing failures and analysis of vibration, and during this time I published several papers and presented at conferences.
How has this experience fed into your research role at nC2?
When I first joined nC2 I continued to work on rail fatigue monitoring, heading up two industry research projects funded by Innovate UK.
One was MONAXLE, a project to develop sensors to detect cracks in train axles, which we worked on in collaboration with Perpetuum Ltd, TWI and the University’s Electronics and Computer Science department. We designed and built a bespoke rig to test this novel technology, testing scaled axles under four-point rotating bend conditions. This project is now complete.
For BEARING EYE, we are helping to develop a new instrument to map and interpret the surface damage observed in failing rail axle bearings, working with Perpetuum Ltd and Scantron Industrial Products Ltd.
My experience working with industry and within teams helped me realise that I was good at project management and liked it even more than lab work, and I gradually moved into my current role.
What’s your approach to working with clients?
The clients are our focus. We try to understand what they really need and design a package of work to provide it. We always do our best to get results to them in the quickest time possible, but we also like to create a relationship with them. We have lots of repeat clients – that’s the best endorsement and it’s so motivational as well.
We’re very flexible in the way we work with clients and offer different ways for them to engage with us. We provide a free quote, and if they want to go ahead we will write a contract which might include different work packages, so the work can be done in stages. If halfway through a project we find something that makes us think we should change direction, we’ll advise the client and agree a new way forward rather than sticking to the original proposal. We try to be flexible to achieve the best outcome for our clients.
Working on an industry research test rig
What do you think sets nC2 apart from other engineering testing services?
We’ve got equipment that most test houses can’t even dream of. If specialist equipment is needed for a job, we can search within the University to find the right instrument – and an expert to help us use it.
We can tailor the team too, depending on the expertise needed for a job, by bringing in specialist academics from the University. Having this unique expertise at our fingertips means we can deliver results but also explain what they mean, in areas ranging from DNA testing to understanding the behaviour of materials at super cold temperatures, to chemical analysis and more.
What do you enjoy about being part of the nC2 team?
I love working at nC2 and I’m proud to be part of it. We are a good team and we collaborate really well. With my Head of Operations hat on I work with everyone and know what everyone is doing and how they can be supported. Now that I work with many experts within the University, I am building strong relationships with them too and I really enjoy this side of my role.
Another aspect that I love is the variety – from contact lenses and chocolate to planes and cars and the beautiful HMS Victory – every day is a new day with a different and unique problem to solve. It is definitely not a boring job!
