Disruption Control Physicist

This role is based at Culham, Oxfordshire.

This role requires employees to complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions.

The Role

Are you looking for an exciting opportunity to make a difference? Join our team and contribute to the future of fusion energy. As Disruption Control Physicist, you will play a pivotal role in performing scientific tasks on identifying and characterising the sequence of mechanisms leading to disruptions, which are likely to be relevant for the STEP device. 

As part of a team develop models describing the physical processes in the various disruption paths, including working closely with those making 3D nonlinear simulations of disruptions, and developing real-time tools for disruption avoidance, with the aim of testing these on present experiments. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Contribute to the development of disruption detection methods with adequate fidelity to allow the disruption avoidance methods to function. 
• Participate in experiments on MAST-U to test real-time disruption avoidance for scenarios appropriate to the STEP device. 
• For STEP study means to mitigate disruption consequences, including heat and EM loads,  and runaway electrons 
• Contribute to refereed journal articles and attend international conferences on magnetic fusion as agreed with management. 
• Be responsible for building a strong network of external collaborations  

Essential Requirements:

• PhD or equivalent level of experience in Physics or related area 
• Proficiency with programming languages, e.g. C, FORTRAN, IDL, Python 
• Proven ability to conduct independent physics research 
• Good oral and written communications skills 
• Excellent team-player with an outward facing work-ethos as he/she will work closely with scientists from around the world 

Desirable Requirements:

• Knowledge of real-time control methods
• Proven ability to carry out detailed analysis of experimental and modelled data, use of suitable tools, error analysis, etc.
• Experience of considering safety as part of planning work
• Strong record of publications in a closely related field

A full list of our benefits can be found here https://careers.ukaea.uk/life-at-ukaea/employee-benefits/

We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly individuals from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities, and women. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) Partner and Inclusion Ambassadors, actively promotes EDI and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.

Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.