Professor Ben Beake worked at the Universities of Hull, Nottingham and UMIST after a degree and PhD (1994) in Chemistry both from the University of Exeter. He joined Micro Materials as an Applications Scientist in 1999 and was promoted to Director of Materials Research in April 2006. He is a Fellow of both the Institute of Nanotechnology and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), as well as a past chair of the IOP Tribology Group. Ben is currently a Visiting Professor in Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds, and the University of Huddersfield. He is very active in collaborative research with other NanoTest users with over 100 published papers in: Developing new nano-mechanical test methods Applying them to study mechanical and tribological properties of thin films and coatings Environmental sensitivity in polymers Professor Tomas Liskiewicz is Head of Department of Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has over 20 years of international academic and engineering experience from leading research institutions in the UK, France, Canada, and Poland. His research interests focus on surface engineering and tribology of functional surfaces, with a particular interest in fretting wear phenomena. His work has been published in such journals as Applied Surface Engineering; Tribology International; Surface and Coatings Technology; Wear and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. He has presented at an array of international conferences and has been involved in fretting research for 20 years, with a main focus on wear processes. He previously spent 2 years in Alberta, Canada, working as a Senior Scientist at Charter Coating, leading material testing projects for the oil and gas industry. He was elected Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London in 2014 and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in London where he acts as Chair of the Tribology Group Committee.