Dr Toby Adkins has been awarded the European Physical Society Plasma Physics Division’s PhD Research Award. The Plasma Physics Division of the EPS recognises up to four scientists for truly outstanding research achievements associated with their DPhil study in the field of plasma physics.
Dr Adkins’ thesis, 'Electromagnetic instabilities and plasma turbulence driven by the electron temperature gradient', investigates how turbulence develops in toroidal fusion devices. It places particular focus on the role of electromagnetic perturbations which have received less attention in existing literature compared to their electrostatic counterparts. Using a combination of analytical and numerical techniques, Dr Adkins was able to demonstrate the existence of the ‘thermo-Alfvénic instability’, a novel phenomenon that has significant implications for turbulent heat transport in the electromagnetic reactor-relevant tokamak scenarios.
Dr Adkins studied for his DPhil at the Department of Physics at Oxford under the supervision of Professor Alex Schekochihin and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Dr Adkins is the sixth winner from the University of Oxford in the last ten years; he joins fellow alumni Dr David Hosking (2023), Dr Plamen Ivanov (2022), Dr Archie Bott (2020), Dr Justin Ball (2017) and Dr Edmund Highcock (2014).