PhD Nuclear physics

The University of Brighton is one of only nine universities in the UK which offer a PhD in nuclear structure physics. It has an international reputation for work on exotic neutron-rich nuclei in the A~100 region.

Members of the group play important roles in international collaborations at major facilities worldwide e.g. RIKEN (Japan) University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and FAIR (Germany).

The focus of current research is on the shapes of the neutron-rich zirconium nuclei with A = 100 to 106. An experimental programme comprising research at the RIKEN laboratory in Japan, the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, Argonne National Laboratory in America and the GANIL facility in France, has investigated the predicted shape change from prolate to oblate for these nuclei.

Graduates with a PhD in nuclear structure physics from the University of Brighton proceed to jobs in various organisations. Recent examples are graduates working as a research scientist in nuclear medicine physics at the National Physical Laboratory, as a prestigious Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the RIKEN lab in Japan and as a radiometric analyst at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.