Dan Lester

Corrosion Engineer

Intertek CAPCIS

Daniel Lester is a Corrosion Engineer at Intertek CAPCIS in Manchester.

He holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester and completed a specialist Master’s apprenticeship in AI and Machine Learning in 2025.

While at university, Daniel completed an internship at Unilever’s R&D headquarters, where he worked on developing online homogeneity monitoring using electrical resistance tomography to optimize mixing in production of consumer products.

After university Daniel began his career at Intertek CAPCIS in 2022 where he has been involved in a variety of corrosion engineering tasks, including Corrosion Risk Assessments and Fitness-for-Service studies, as well as more complex consultancy studies including the influence of fluid dynamics on corrosion in oil export pipelines. In addition to his core corrosion engineering work, he has contributed to Intertek’s AI initiatives, including projects focused on automated inspection classification.

In addition to corrosion work, Daniel has applied machine learning techniques to analytical chemistry challenges. While working with Intertek’s advanced hydrocarbon composition analysis software, Interpret™, for his recent AI Masters apprenticeship, he developed high accuracy machine learning models to classify different types of cooking oils and to detect contamination using infrared spectroscopy. This work was aimed at tackling fraud in the used cooking oil (UCO) supply chain by distinguishing between virgin oils, UCO, and blends. His model’s objectives were to enhance the accuracy and reliability of biofuel feedstock verification, ensuring compliance with sustainability regulations.

Daniel has a strong interest in data science and automation and is focused on integrating data-driven methodologies into the oil and gas industry, particularly in corrosion and asset integrity  management. His work aims to bridge the gap between traditional corrosion engineering and modern analytics, enhancing efficiency across industry.