Nicholas Daras
PhD candidate
Nicholas matriculated from St. David’s Marist Inanda in 2016, having received Full Colours for Academics, Swimming and Leadership. He went on to study a BSc(Eng) in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, graduating in 2020 with Honours.
Nicholas’ undergraduate project involved developing a Split Hopkinson Bar that could be used to conduct three-point bending tests on small, cortical bone specimens. He enrolled for his MSc with BISRU in 2021 and in early 2022 he upgraded his research to a PhD. Now being supervised by Dr. Trevor Cloete and Prof. Gerald Nurick, his research is focused on determining the mechanical properties of fresh cortical bone in both the quasi-static and dynamic strain rate regimes.