Dr Sebastian Davies of the University of Liverpool has been announced as the UK representative for the European Nuclear Society PhD Award 2025.
UK candidates were assessed by a Nuclear Institute team headed by Professor Laurence Williams OBE FREng FNucI, a member of the ENS High Scientific Council.
His PhD thesis “Coupling of Subchannel Tools with Advanced Multiscale Core Simulations,” was carried out in collaboration with EDF, and addressed a critical challenge in nuclear energy, namely balancing efficiency and safety in next-generation Light Water Reactors (LWRs).
Currently, he is looking into establishing a collaboration between the University of Liverpool in the UK and the CIEMAT in Spain to work simultaneously on two proposals. One proposal would be coupling FRAPCON and FRAPTRAN (thermo-mechanics codes used at the CIEMAT) with CTF (thermal hydraulics code used at the University of Liverpool). This would respond to the need to evaluate these codes for their use in the safety analysis of current and advanced nuclear fuel.
The other proposal would be the introduction of fine discretization of the albedo and burn-up calculation in both LOTUS (neutronics code of the University of Liverpool) and the coupling software environment created during the PhD. This would respond to future work in his PhD thesis on improving an innovative tool for LWR simulation for the UK nuclear renaissance.
Speaking about winning the award, Sebastian said:
“It makes me feel very proud and honoured to be nominated as the UK candidate for the 2025 European Nuclear Society PhD Award. Honestly, this is the best news I have received in a long time.
Now, I am indeed sure that the work I did during my PhD was worth it. Regardless of how many barriers you have to overcome, perseverance and family support are key to completing a PhD.“
European Nuclear Society PhD Award
The European Nuclear Society (ENS) organises an annual award to recognise an outstanding PhD thesis work. The ENS High Scientific Council (HSC) acts as the Selection Committee, and the Nuclear Institute, as the UK Member of the ENS, nominates the UK candidate for this prestigious award.
The winner of the UK competition receives:
- Progression to the European final in Brussels
- £1000 prize, sponsored by UK National Nuclear Laboratory
- Invitation to contribute a technical paper to the Nuclear Future journal
- Invitation to the NI/NIA Annual Dinner in London in December 2025.
The UK competition for the 2026 Award will open later this year.