Professor Malcolm Joyce
Professor & Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award HolderResearch Interests
Malcolm Joyce holds a Personal Chair in Nuclear Engineering at Lancaster University, is Cross-faculty Associate Dean for Research and was previously Associate Dean for Research in FST and Head of the Department of Engineering from 2008-2015. His industrial experience includes Smith System Engineering Ltd., BNFL plc. and most recently as Technical Director of Hybrid Instruments Ltd. Recent examples of his research include: the association of ultra-trace level plutonium in the ground with legacy breeder reactor operations (Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21575-9), radiation-induced production of low-carbon fuel additives from biodiesel wastes (Communications Chemistry, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-021-00572-5) and wireless communications with fast neutrons (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2021.165946).
He is Principal Investigator on: 'Autonomous Inspection for Responsive and Sustainable Nuclear Fuel Manufacture (AIRS-NFM, EP/V051059/1, £1.9M); Advancing Location Accuracy via Collimated Nuclear Assay for Decommissioning Robotic Applications (ALACANDRA, EP/V026941/1, £1.5M), 'AMS-UK: A UK Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility for Nuclear Fission Research (EPSRC, EP/T01136X/1, NNUF Phase 2, £2.8M) and 'JUNO: A Network for Japan - UK Nuclear Opportunities' (EP/P013600/1), and Co-I on a number of projects, inc. the NNUF Management Grant (EP/T011351/1, £7.4M). His research group currently comprises 3 post-doctoral research associates, 1 Experimental Officer and 6 research students.
His area of research interest concerns the imaging of radiation emissions from operating nuclear reactors, the combination of radiation detection assessments with robots and trace assay of plutonium. He is author on > 180 refereed journal articles, has a h-index of 30 (Scopus) and was sole author on Engineering impact case studies submitted to both REF2014 and REF2021.
Professor Joyce has been primary supervisor to >25 PhD students, he is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Nuclear Institute. He was Editor on the Elsevier journal Progress in Nuclear Energy (2012-2022), and is Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science and the European Journal of Physics N (EPJ-N). He is a member of the UK Government's Nuclear Industry Research Advisory Board (NIRAB), co-chair of the National Nuclear User Facility (NNUF) and a member of the UKAEA Programme Advisory Committee.
He was awarded the James Watt medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in 2014 and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2016. He wrote: 'Nuclear Engineering: A Conceptual Guide to Nuclear Power', published by Butterworth-Heinemann in 2017.
Two funded opportunities for the study towards a PhD are available currently in the areas of applied gamma-ray spectroscopy and accelerator mass spectrometry: please contact me for further details.PhD Supervision Interests
Nuclear safeguards, contamination monitoring, radiation imaging, environmental assay, robotic deployment.
Advanced borehole trials for land quality monitoring applications in nuclear decommissioning
01/04/2023 → 30/09/2023
Research
Radiation Hardened Robotics for Remote Inspection
01/11/2022 → 31/03/2025
Research
Ground Level Enhancement Event Monitor (Implementation Phase)
01/09/2022 → 31/03/2024
Research
Ground Level Enhancement Event Monitor (Implementation Phase)
01/09/2022 → 31/03/2024
Research
Ground Level Enhancement Event Monitor (GLEEM)
28/06/2021 → 27/06/2022
Research
Advancing Location Accuracy via Collimated Nuclear Assay for Decommissioning Robotic Applications
01/04/2021 → 31/03/2025
Research
RAIN Extension Stream B
01/04/2021 → 31/03/2022
Research
RAIN extension Stream A
01/04/2021 → 30/09/2021
Research
Improved Radioactive source location and characterisation via empiricial transform anaylsis
01/09/2020 → 30/09/2021
Research
AMS-UK: A UK Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility for Nuclear Fission Research
01/11/2019 → 31/05/2023
Research
UTGARD LAB PHASE II: A SIMFUEL FABRICATION & CHARACTERISATION FACILITY
01/11/2019 → 31/05/2023
Research
PhD titled “In-situ groundwater monitoring to improve identification of ground/soil contamination volumes and associated contaminated in-ground infrastructure that may remain at the Site End State
03/10/2019 → 02/04/2023
Research
iCASE: Electrokinetic In situ Decontamination of Entrained Radioactivity (EIDER)
01/10/2019 → 30/09/2023
Research
iCASE: Electrokinetic In situ Decontamination of Entrained Radioactivity (EIDER)
01/10/2019 → 30/09/2023
Research
Reliability Limits of Programmable Protection Systems
23/04/2019 → 30/03/2020
Research
BEIS: Knowledge Transfer Plan for Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguards
25/02/2019 → 04/03/2020
Research
Neutron production and shielding characterisation at DCF using neutron spectroscopy and imaging device under development at Lancaster
01/10/2018 → 30/09/2019
Research
JUNO: A Network for Japan - UK Nuclear Opportunities
17/11/2017 → 16/11/2022
Research
IS 2015 - Advanced Materials
01/06/2015 → …
Research
Institutional Sponsorship 2015
01/06/2015 → 31/03/2016
Research
Industrial Doctorate Centre: Nuclear Engineering
01/10/2009 → 31/03/2018
Other
Autonomous Inspection for Responsive and Sustainable Nuclear Fuel Manufacture (AIRS-NFM)
01/01/1900 → …
Research
- Doctorate Centre in Nuclear Engineering
- Energy Lancaster