Josh obtained a bachelor’s degree in Physics at Swansea University in 2025. In his final year, he completed a project he proposed to investigate the effect of electric fields on the probability of quantum tunnelling and the applications of this to increasing the efficiency of fusion reactors, with an evaluation of the ways this might be technically achievable within a fusion environment. During his time at Swansea, he was President of the Physics Society for 2 years and chaired the Institute of Physics’ annual PLANCKS UK & Ireland Preliminaries Conference in 2025.

After completing this project, Josh joined Bangor University having secured funding for a PhD with the UKAEA for a project as a part of the ESPRC’s Nuclear Energy Futures CDT. The PhD work he is undertaking will be focussed on performing computational simulations of the performance of steels for applications in future fusion power plants, primarily by using Density Functional Theory (DFT). The project aims to understand the thermodynamic stability of phases within the various extreme conditions of a fusion power plant and mapping the underlying material behaviour, as well as the crystallographic relationships associated with this stability, as these are relatively unknown properties for these materials. As a result, this research will allow for optimisation of these materials for future fusion power plants. This project is supervised by Dr Tessa Davey, UKAEA Reader in Nuclear Materials at the NFI.