Dr. Lawton’s practice centres on understanding how materials, manufacturing processes, and system level interactions influence performance, degradation, and failure. He regularly leads programs involving root-cause failure analysis, performance assessment, and risk-focused product validation and verification—helping clients address urgent issues as well as longer term reliability challenges. His work spans early-stage design considerations through to in service failures, field return analysis, and multidisciplinary incident investigations.

Before joining Secretariat, Dr. Lawton served as a Managing Scientist at a leading global engineering consulting firm, where he directed time critical, technically complex investigations across the energy storage sector. In that role, he managed cross office teams supporting clients facing urgent performance issues, thermal events, product failures, and manufacturing concerns. He also designed and executed tailored investigative programs that integrated materials science, electrochemical behavior, system architecture, and end use conditions.

Dr. Lawton earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Warwick, focusing on polymeric semiconductors and structure–property relationships relevant to optoelectronic devices. He is a Chartered Scientist (CSci) and Member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (MIMMM), and has received numerous first place presentation awards, including the IOM3 Young Persons’ Lecture Competition – UK National Finals (2018).