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New Chief Executive At UK Atomic Energy Authority

20th August 2016

Photograph of New Chief Executive At UK Atomic Energy Authority

The UK fusion scientist Ian Chapman has been named as the next chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). On 1 October Chapman will succeed Steve Cowley, who has been head of the authority since 2009 and will become president of Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford.

As head of the UKAEA, Chapman will lead the UK's magnetic confinement fusion research programme at the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire. He will oversee the upgrade of the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak, which is set to be ready in 2017, as well as the operation of the Joint European Torus (JET) - one of the world's largest nuclear fusion devices. He will also lead the UKAEA's other activities at Culham, including the recently opened Materials Research Facility, the RACE robotics centre and the Oxford Advanced Skills apprentice training facility.

With an MSc in mathematics and physics from Durham University, Chapman began working at Culham in 2004 while completing a PhD with Imperial College London. In 2014 he was named head of tokamak science at Culham and then became fusion programme manager a year later. Aged just 34, Chapman will be one of the youngest chief executives of a major research facility. "While I am young, I am also experienced," he says. "I hope my profile means that fusion, and its huge potential to give the world cleaner energy, will get noticed."

PHOTO From UKAEA.