Manchester remains Europe’s largest centre of corrosion education and research and that is why the Institute’s Council have recently taken the decision to support, with bursaries, MSc programme students drawn from those taking the MSc (PGT) in corrosion, and those opting for the corrosion option in the final (4th) year of the undergraduate materials engineering MEng programme. This will be ICorr’s largest ever single investment in corrosion education with a total sponsorship of £25k per year over 5 years (£125k), and is fully aligned to our memorandum of association (MOA). The timing of the announcement is linked to the 65th Jubilee Symposium and the opening of the new Corrosion Labs at Manchester, held on 3rd and 4th April 2023 to celebrate 65 years of corrosion teaching and research at The University of Manchester (UoM).
The UoM corrosion group comprises a collegiate academic team where Stuart Lyon is currently “first among equals”. Stuart was, of course, ICorr President from 2004-2006, and CEO of Correx from 2007 to 2012 when ICATS was just getting going. Stuart has always remembered his father’s despair when the beloved family car (a Rover 2000) gradually rusted away. Now, as AkzoNobel Professor of Corrosion Control, Stuart specialises in the field of protective organic coatings formulating environmentally sustainable paints, to greatly extend the useful life of materials and assets.
Corrosion education was established by Ken Ross (a Chemical Engineer) in 1957, at the former Manchester College of Science and Technology (which became UMIST in 1966). Ken had become aware of the cost of corrosion damage in chemical plants and the lack of awareness of maintenance staff and management, and was determined to do something about it. Subsequently in 1962 he established, with Graham Wood (another former ICorr President), the MSc course in Corrosion Science and Engineering which continues to this day as the MSc in Corrosion Control Engineering. The Corrosion and Protection Centre, led by Graham as Britain’s first “Professor of Rust” came about in 1972 as a consequence of the much-quoted Hoar Report on the cost of corrosion. The Corrosion Protection Centre Industrial Service (CAPCIS – now part of Intertek), which became the world’s largest corrosion consulting organisation, was also established at the same time with government pump-priming. At one time more than half the world’s corrosion engineers outside North America had been educated in Manchester.
