Programme & Speakers
2026 Events:
York: Monday 22nd – Thursday 25th June
Oxford: Monday 21st – Thursday 24th September
York Programme
Course Overview
York FIS 2026 schedule – provisional
This four-day course offers a broad overview of plasma physics, science and technology needed to understand energy generation by fusion power. Each talk is delivered by an expert in the field, and includes 1 hour of lecture and 30 minutes of discussion with the speaker.
Location: Guildhall in York City Centre
Monday 22nd June
- UK Fusion Landscape Adam Baker, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
- Fusion Energy: the conditions and approaches Roddy Vann, University of York
- Plasma Physics for Fusion Industry
- Materials Science for Fusion Industry Amy Gandy, UKAEA
Tuesday 23rd June
- The Tokamak Garry Voss, UKAEA
- Inertial Confinement Fusion
- Fusion Power Cycle, and Heating & Current Drive Mark Henderson, UKIFS
- Tokamak diverters and plasma exhaust
Wednesday 24th June
- Diagnostics and Control Hannah Willett, Tokamak Energy
- Tokamak operational scenarios, the EUROfusion roadmap and how to commission a power plant Fernanda Rimini, UKAEA
- Panel session Chair: Aneeqa Khan, University of Manchester
Thursday 25th June
- Tritium, lithium and the fusion fuel cycle Phil Edmondson, University of Manchester
- Magnetic Machines: Alternative Path for Fusion Energy Stephanie Diem, University of Wisconsin – Madison
- Digital Approaches to Design in Fusion
Oxford Programme
Course Overview
This four-day course covers the engineering applications of fusion. We look at power plant design and the main engineering challenges, then at the economics of getting fusion onto the grid, and the regulatory landscape. Each talk is delivered by an expert in the field, and includes 1 hour of lecture and 30 minutes of discussion with the speaker.
Dates: Monday 21st – Thursday 24th September
Location: HB Allen Centre, Keble College, Oxford
Garry Voss, UKAEA
The Tokamak (York)
Garry Voss is currently working for UKAEA at the Culham Science Centre on Nuclear Fusion where he is the Lead Technical Advisor for Spherical Tokamaks. He is Deputy Chief Engineer for the MAST-Upgrade project (a medium sized spherical tokamak) and also leads the development of the commercial fusion reactor design for the STEP project. He has previously worked on various fusion reactor projects mainly involving spherical tokamaks and also spent some time working in the aerospace industry on the development of space planes. His background is in electro-mechanical and nuclear engineering and the area he is most interested in is the architecture of a fusion device, where striking a balance between the often conflicting requirements of each sub-system is essential.
Hannah Willett, Tokamak Energy
Diagnostics and Control (York)
Hannah Willett is a Plasma Diagnostician specialising in spectroscopy at Tokamak Energy Ltd in Oxfordshire. She has a PhD in Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy and spent some time working as a tutor in the US before joining Tokamak Energy in 2021. Primarily an experimentalist, Hannah is responsible for maintaining and upgrading the spectroscopic systems on ST40, Tokamak Energy’s magnetic confinement fusion experiment, as well as contributing to the data analysis for measurement of plasma parameters such as temperature and rotation speed.
Philip Edmondson, University of Manchester
Tritium, lithium and the fusion fuel cycle (York)
Prof. Phil Edmondson is the UKAEA Chair in Tritium Science & Technology at the University of Manchester where he leads a group investigating various aspects of the tritium breeder blanket fuel cycle for fusion power devices. This includes the extraction of tritium from breeder materials such as FLiBe, detritiating solid materials for waste handling, and how hydrogen isotopes alters material properties. Prior to this, he was Group Leader of the Radiation Effects and Microstructural Analysis Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for over 10 years, using advanced microscopy techniques to understand materials’ evolution under neutron irradiation for fusion systems.
Fernanda Rimini, UKAEA
Tokamak operational scenarios, the EUROfusion roadmap and how to commission a power plant (York)
Arrived at JET in 1987 with a 1 year post-doc grant...and didn’t leave until 1999, including participation in the 1997 record DTE1 experiments. After a few years at CEA Cadarache, France, came back to JET in 2009 and started working for the UKAEA in JET Plasma Operations Group. Presently JET Senior Exploitation Manager for EUROfusion.My main role is participation in, and management of, scientific and technical research and engineering developments in the European Fusion programme. Main area of competence lies in plasma physics, real-time plasma control, scenario development and integrated machine commissioning. I have been one of the JET Expert Session Leaders with overall responsibility for safe tokamak operation close to the technical boundaries of the JET machine, and I have been part of the group of international experts tasked, in 2016/2017, to revise with IO the ITER Research Plan.Presently Head of Operations, Control and Tokamak Systems at UKAEA, looking at how we apply our expertise to Next Gen tokamaks and build the operators for future Fusion Power Plants.
Aneeqa Khan, University of Manchester
Panel Chair
Dr Aneeqa Khan is a Lecturer in Nuclear Materials. Having completed a PhD in materials for fusion applications, followed by working at the ITER Organization and Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, she is now based at the University of Manchester, where she also completed a research fellowship in nuclear fusion. She is Lead for Outreach, Media and Engagement for the Fusion Power Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) and Co-Lead of Fusion Power CDT activities at Manchester. She is also involved with the new Fusion Engineering CDT. She is the Lead Dalton Nuclear Institute Champion, sits on the Fusenet board of governors and is a Royce Nuclear Materials Steering Group member. She is a member of the Fusion Industry Taskforce, regularly contributes to high profile panels and interacts with media (including Al Jazeera, BBC, The Guardian) and policy makers on fusion and inclusion and diversity in STEM. She was invited to Nuclear in Parliament Week and to contribute to the Government Office for Science Foresight Project. Her research interests are on materials and engineering for nuclear fusion.
Mark Henderson, UKIFS
Fusion Power Cycle, and Heating & Current Drive
Mark Henderson completed his PhD at Auburn University associated with the design, construction and operation of the Compact Auburn Torsatron. From 1992 to 2008, Mark worked at CRPP (SPC) in Lausanne, Switzerland as part of the team designing, building and operating the microwave heating system on the TCV tokamak. This included the use of microwaves for controlling the seawtooth instability, non-induction plasma operation and control of internal transport barriers. In 2004 he imitated alternative design concepts for the ITER upper launcher and then for the whole system that aimed at a simplified design with improved functionality. In 2008, Mark joined the ITER Organisation as the head of the Electron Cyclotron Section leader until 2021 upon which he joined the STEP team as the group leader for the STEP HCD system.
Roddy Vann, University of York
Fusion Energy: the conditions & approaches
Roddy has been an academic at the University of York since 2005. He is Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Fusion Power: a collaboration across six UK universities and more than twenty non-academic partners currently training over a hundred PhD students in fusion science. Roddy is also Director of the Fusion Industry School, Skills Pillar Lead for the Fusion Industry Taskforce and, until recently, Chair of the Board of Governors of FuseNet (the European Fusion Education Network). His primary research focus is microwave physics for applications in tokamaks. He holds Part III in maths from Cambridge and PhD in physics from Warwick.
