It's Thursday at CNR'26, and we are treated to a talk by Sam Sullivan, PhD student at Surrey, co-supervised by me and his industrial sponsor supervisors, James Benstead and Lee Morgan. Here he is, standing in front of the ~100 or so members of the audience, doing himself proud. Well done, Sam!
I am at the CNR'26 conference in Fukuoka, Japan. CNR = Compound Nuclear Reactions, being a class of nuclear reactions in which the nucleus undergoes a particular intermediate state. A large class of these are neutron-induced reactions, such as those taking place in fission reactors. I am here more because of my work on heavy-ion collisions, which is the usual way of describing reactions between pairs of nuclei, as opposed to reactions of a nucleus and a subnuclear particle.
I presented the work largely done by my recent PhD graduate Khlood Alharthi, on the effect of the nuclear surface on fusion reactions. Here I am standing by my poster in the poster session last night (picture thanks to Amy Lovell):
Last Thursday, my PhD student Khlood Alharthi had her viva. I'm pleased to say that she did well, and has passed, subject to corrections.
I'm always pleased when my students get their PhDs, but I'm particularly proud (on her behalf) of Khlood's outcome. Her journey has not been easy, coming to study as a mum with 4 kids, navigating through a foreign system that can seem byzantine enough to us natives.
The examiners were Prof Patrick Regan (internal examiner from Surrey) and Prof David Jenkins (external, from York). Here's a picture taken by Patrick (Paddy) of L-R Dave Jenkins, Khlood, and me, in front of the whiteboard which they had her using throughout the viva
Today sees the first preprint appearing on the arXiv from my student Sam Sullivan. It represents the results of work he undertook as part of a BAND fellowship which took him to Michigan State University last year. He used Bayesian methods to fit a new optical potential appropriate to a particular region of the nuclear chart (around zirconium isotopes). The method intrinsically includes uncertainty quantification, so that any predictions made with the optical potential come with well-formulated error bars.
Sam has submitted it to Phys Rev C, and we're hoping that's where his first publication will appear. Fingers crossed
Here is a plot from the paper showing predictions of neutron elastic scattering cross sections in Y-89
We are deep in the school summer holidays for my kids, and as such, I am taking a lot of the time as annual leave, though with a couple of deadlines put in the summer holidays, I have to keep the odd work day in the calendar slightly against my wishes.
The last week has involved being in Oberstdorf, Germany's southernmost town, where two of my kids take part in a shorttrack speed skating training camp and competition. They are both members of the local club in Guildford, and they really enjoy the annual trip to Germany. The place, in the Alps, is a bit of a trek to get to, being more or less a full day of travel each way between home to rental apartment, but it's worth it, and both kids finished saying they want to go next year, so looks like I will start saving up for that trip now, and make plans to be back there same time next year!
Here are a couple of photos - me and the boys, and the two of them on the ice racing each other
I made what I think is my first visit to Warrington proper last week. I had been there before to arrive at the station and get a taxi straight out of town, which I think barely counts. This time, I arrived at the station, and walked to the hotel I'd booked for the night, then in the morning took a leisurely walk to the bus station to get a bus to Birchwood (a suburb or a separate town, I don't know) for a meeting at UKNNL's offices.
I suspect Warrington does not feature much on a typical tourist destination. I quite enjoyed my morning walk to the bus station, which took me from one side of the town centre to the other, crossing the river Mersey on the way.
The streets were not very busy with other people walking around, which may have been because of the men's football match the night before when England were playing, but the roads were perfectly busy, so perhaps it's just that not too many people walk through the town centre. Actually, like a lot of towns, cars are prioritised to the extent that when I wanted to walk from the Warrington Cenotaph to the other side of the road I had to cross 5 pedestrian crossings with call buttons at a junction where of course car drivers wait for one light change to get where they want. On the other hand, once past that junction, there was a part-pedestrianised (depending on time of day) area centred on Market Gate which looks like it had once been a busy roundabout for traffic, but now was a nice place to walk, with a fountain in the middle.
As well as the Cenotaph, there was a nearby statue of Cromwell, and a plaque about how the bridge was important in the closing days of the Civil War. I took a picture of the Cenotaph, which I include below.
I also liked Warrington's bus station, which is nicer, brighter, and better-kept than Guildford's
Review of Warrington over.
It has made the front page of the BBC News today that Dame Penelope Keith has died. While her fame came from her acting career, her (slight) relevance to me/this blog is that she had strong links to the county of Surrey and was often to be found supporting county activities. She served a term as the High Sheriff of Surrey and took part at official University events on occasion: For example, on the occasion of the University's 50th anniversary, she took part, in academic robes, in a celebratory procession on Guildford High Street. Here's a story where you can see her, and my nuclear physics colleague Jim Al-Khalili dressed in their finery in the procession.
RIP Penelope
Here is a picture of her on Wikipedia (By Funk Dooby from Kent, UK - Penelope Keith, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link)
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