Robert Harrison is a Senior Lecturer based in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester (UoM). He graduated with a Masters degree in chemistry from UoM before holding a position in the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), and then completed his PhD in nuclear engineering at Imperial College London in 2015.
Following his PhD, he held a post-doctoral research position at the University of Huddersfield working on in-situ transmission electron microscopy and ion irradiation of nuclear materials before starting in his position as Plutonium Research Fellow at UoM in 2018. He currently holds an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship in radiation effect in advanced nuclear fuels and cladding materials.
Robert works on several projects in the area of advanced field-assisted sintering of nuclear fuels. He leads on the development of actinide-capable facilities and alpha nuclide active electron microscopy suite installation and commissioning at the Henry Royce Institute. Thanks to his expertise in nuclear fuels and irradiation damage analysis, he was invited to be the Technology Platform Lead for the ‘Fuels and Irradiated Materials Analysis’ platform which feeds into several key research areas in Royce, including nuclear materials, materials for extreme environments (MS4DE) and imaging and characterisation.
