Ben Dudson
Professor

Profile

Career

MSci, DPhil (Oxford) 

• 2009 -  University of York, UK  Lecturer in plasma physics
• 2007-2009 - University of York, UK  Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, studying Explosive instabilities in tokamaks
• 2003-2008 - UKAEA Fusion, and Trinity college Oxford. DPhil on "Edge turbulence in the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak". Accepted April 2008, awarded the 2009 Culham thesis prize
• 1999-2003 - Imperial College London Physics MSci (1st)

Departmental roles

• 2012 - 2020    Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) coordinator

Research

Overview

Research Group: 

Summary of expertise: 

• Experiments and modelling of tokamak edge plasmas

My research area is magnetic confinement fusion, particularly tokamaks. I lead development of the BOUT++ plasma simulation code, and am involved in experiments on the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST). I collaborate with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) USA, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) USA, General Atomics, USA and the Culham Center for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK. My research is funded by the UK EPSRC, the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) and EURATOM.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Programming in Python (BSc/MPhys Year 1 core)
• Environmental Physics (BSc/MPhys Year 2 core)
• Final year projects (BSc Year 3 & MPhys Year 4)

Postgraduate

• Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MSc in Fusion Energy)
• Computational Plasma Techniques (MSc in Fusion Energy)
• Introduction to Linux and programming (MSc in Fusion Energy)
• Computational Laboratory (MSc in Fusion Energy)
• Research Projects (MSc in Fusion Energy)

Other teaching

Pastoral academic supervision of 20 undergraduate and taught postgraduate students.