Prof Amy Gandy is a member of the Henry Royce Institute’s Governing Board.
Amy is Head of the Materials Science and Engineering Programme at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), currently on secondment to the UK Government’s commercial fusion programme, the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) Programme, as the Materials Development and Realisation Manager, and is visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield.
Amy has over 23 years’ experience investigating radiation damage effects in materials, particularly in alloys and ceramics, with 11 years’ developing materials specifically for fusion energy. She currently leads a large, multidisciplinary team who, in collaboration with academia, industry and major national and international user facilities, develop materials for fusion (and adjacent) technologies, including the UK’s first industrial scale production of fusion-grade steel, as well as ceramic matrix composites and multifunctional coatings. In 2024-2025, in collaboration with the Henry Royce Institute, Amy brought together the UK fusion materials communities to update the UK Fusion Materials Roadmap, identifying key challenges and the solutions required for the UK to achieve commercial fusion.
Previously, Amy held a Leverhulme Trust Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in Understanding Radiation Damage Mechanisms in Compositionally Complex Alloys (2021 – 2022) and was Senior Lecturer in Nuclear Materials Engineering leading the Fusion Materials Research Group (2015 – 2023), and Henry Royce Institute Technology Platform Lead in Advanced Characterisation to Understand Radiation Damage in Materials (2020 – 2023) at the University of Sheffield. Amy received a Masters in Physics with Space Technology from the University of Salford in 2003, followed by a PhD in Physics and Materials Science, jointly awarded by the University of Salford and the University of Poitiers, France, in 2009.
