Webinars

The live webinars are now finished for 2024. However, watch again or catch-up on webinars that you may have missed with the recordings below.  

We often imagine the nucleus of an atom as a sphere, a mix of protons and neutrons. In fact, the majority of nuclei are not spherical, but deformed like a rugby ball. The shape of the nucleus can also change depending on the amount of internal energy, and different structures are possible within the same nucleus. As the nucleus becomes excited or heated up, the protons and neutrons can rearrange and cluster together into alpha particles or other sub-nuclei producing, for example, "nuclear molecules".

In this talk, Prof. Tzany Kokalova Wheldon and Dr Stuart Pirrie introduce the nuclear chart and exotic nuclear shapes, before exploring a very special state in carbon-12: the so-called "Hoyle state". This particular state is vitally important for the formation of elements in stars (nucleosynthesis) and explains how carbon-based life, including all life on Earth, can exist! Tzany and Stuart describe how this state was discovered and how experimental nuclear physics continues to give us new insights into our Universe. 

Professor Tzany Kokalova Wheldon is a lecturer and researcher in nuclear physics at the University of Birmingham, where her research focuses on exotic nuclei and nuclear astrophysics. She is the Director of the University of Birmingham’s Positron Imaging Centre, and she was named in the 2020 Timewise Power 50 awards: a roll call of 50 powerful executives in the UK who also work part-time or flexibly.

Dr Stuart Pirrie is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on experimental low-energy physics.

Discover the key concepts of particle physics and find out about the big open questions that researchers are currently exploring. In this webinar, Dr Kate Pachel discusses some of the types of particle physics experiments going on today, with a particular focus on high energy experiments and accelerators and colliders. She ends with a brief look at the idea of particle dark matter and how collider based experiments could lead us towards it.

Kate is an experimental particle physicist whose research focuses on searches for new particles. She has been a member of the ATLAS collaboration for more than 10 years but has recently turned her focus to developing the DarkLight experiment. She got her BSc from the University of Victoria and her PhD from the University of Oxford. She worked as a postdoc first at Simon Fraser University and then at Duke University before beginning her current position as a research scientist at TRIUMF.

Society faces an enormous challenge with the worldwide need for energy increasing, while at the same time energy generation must be decarbonised to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change. Fusion offers the potential to be a safe, sustainable, low-carbon energy source. With this in mind, the Government issued a UK Fusion Strategy in 2021, and the STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) programme aims to deliver a UK prototype fusion energy plant by 2040. It will hopefully demonstrate the commercial viability of fusion. In 2022, West Burton in Nottinghamshire was chosen to be the site of this prototype power plant.  Fusion technologist, Chris Ashe, and Development Engineer, Sunchi Chen, give an overview of the physics and engineering needs of a fusion power plant and how we will address them with STEP. The latest results in fusion, including the record-breaking final pulses achieved with the JET tokamak in Culham, Oxfordshire are also discussed. 

Christopher Ashe completed the graduate scheme at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and is now a full-time Fusion Technologist. He currently resides in the Power Plant Modelling & Integration (PPMI) group and is responsible for the development of the PROCESS & BLUEMIRA whole plant modelling codes, which means he works at the cutting edge of fusion design.

Sunchi Chen also completed the graduate scheme at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), and is now a Development Engineer. She recently took the post of Technology Lead, and she is responsible for the development of novel technologies for Fusion Energy. 

In nuclear medicine, radionuclides are used for two main applications: functional imaging (where different processes in the body can be mapped, such as brain activity, or the spread of cancer cells) and targeted therapy (where cancer cells can be targeted and destroyed selectively). The therapy aspect has seen a recent growth thanks to new radiopharmaceuticals that have become available for patients in regular clinical settings. However, this approach remains a very niche area, with very few patients being treated for very few cancers.

In this session, Prof. Thomas Elias Cocolios will review the basics of nuclear medicine before discussing the ongoing efforts to broaden the scope of nuclear medicine and increase its accessibility. The role of nuclear physics research in this effort will be given particular emphasis to highlight what can be contributed in this multidisciplinary effort.

Thomas Elias Cocolios is an Associate Professor at the KU Leuven Department of Physics & Astronomy, Institute for Nuclear and Radiation Physics. His research covers both fundamental and applied topics, all centered around the use of radioactive ion beams. He is involved in laser spectroscopy of exotic radionuclides at the ISOLDE facility at CERN within the PI-LIST and CRIS Collaborations, in muonic x-ray spectroscopy of radionuclides at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland), and the production of innovative medical radionuclides at the MEDICIS facility at CERN. In 2021, he was awarded the SCK CEN Chair Roger Van Geen for his work on and with radioactive ion beam, and an ERC Consolidator Grant (NSHAPE) in 2023 for his work on laser and muonic x-ray spectroscopy. Outside of his lab, Thomas is also known for his knitting, which he casually brings to meetings and conferences.