Profile

Hi, I’m Ben, a second year fusion CDT PhD student at the university of York. A CDT is a more structured PhD program than normal, and provides additional training to help make the most of a PhD.

Outside of my research and work, I love to keep active with CrossFit, rock climbing and gymnastics. Occasionally I make a trip to the Yorkshire coastline to go surfing in the winter months. I also like to keep busy with musical interests, playing both the piano and guitar.

I have an MEng in mechanical engineering and am currently using the PhD to improve my knowledge base, hopefully allowing me to be a better engineer/scientist in the Fusion industry in the future.

My PhD project is focusing on SAMI, a synthetic aperture microwave diagnostic device. The first part of that name ‘synthetic aperture’ basically means a digitally focusing camera, no need for lens or anything else! This is useful as neutrons damage glass components, causing them to darken and become opaque. Therefore normal glass optical components will require lots of maintenance time.

The diagnostic uses microwave-frequency light to determine specific parameters within the plasma within a tokamak. Certain physics allows specific measurement of key parameters, the physics being utilised is the reflection of light at certain points in the plasma, and a doppler shift of the light (exactly the same as the way an ambulance is higher pitch as it comes towards you, and decreases in pitch as it passes away from you).

I have undertaken learning in many different areas of fusion energy production and plasma physics. Key problems that will need to be solved include tritium breeding – creating the fuel necessary for fusion, first wall materials – creating materials to withstand intense heat loads, superconducting magnets – creating better superconducting magnets, hopefully that can operate at room temperature.

I wake up and get ready to go the gym. Usually I do 15-25 mins of a strength move. It can be anything from squats to snatches (an olympic weightlifting move). Then this is followed by a HIIT workout for 20 mins, where I’ll do some high intensity exercise. I then go home, have a shower and make some breakfast – usually an egg bagel, with some veggies or salad.

I then go into my office space, where I’ll start doing some work around 9:30am. My day usually looks something like –

Doing some research – this may include reading some papers and consolidating the knowledge from the papers. Or it may be doing some specific research relating to a problem i’m currently having with my project, something I need to work through to get to the next stage.

I then do some administrative work – this includes writing up minutes from my weeks meetings with my supervisor and other people. This is to keep a record of those meetings. And it also includes anything I need to do for my PhD, such as expense claims, organising meetings and sorting out collaboration with other students.

The specific things i’m working on at the moment include finalising the installation of my project on MAST-U, which is a spherical tokamak in UK, found at Culham, near Oxford. And then i’ll start to focus on the data acquisition of the system – how my project handles data creation and storage. And then i’ll start to look in data processing techniques to start figuring out some physics from my project.

After 4-5pm, I usually go home or go to gymnastics on the University campus, and then I play some piano or guitar in the evening and I cook some food. Then finally I chill out for the evening before going to bed to read a book before lights out.

The CDT program ran a podcast entitled ‘A Glass of Seawater’ and unfortunately it has become dormant recently due to Covid and peoples commitments to their PhDs. I’d like to use the money to get the podcast started again, and start creating some new content. Its an exciting time for Fusion with the grants given for STEP and for General Fusion in the UK!