Co-Directors
Professor Colin Boxall
Professor Colin Boxall holds The LRF Chair in Nuclear Decommissioning & Engineering at Lancaster University and is Head of the new LRF Centre for the Safety of Nuclear Energy. He has research interests in the behaviour of actinides throughout the nuclear industrial fuel cycle and has written more than 160 publications including more than 60 reports for the nuclear industry, including the National Nuclear Laboratory, Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
He collaborates nationally and internationally, his research group (1 Lecturer 3 PDRAs, 12 PhDs) being part of the UK Spent Fuel Research Group, the EPSRC DISTINCTIVE consortium (Decommissioning, Immobilisation and Storage soluTIons for NuClear wasTe InVEntories), the “Next Generation Nuclear” Centre for Doctoral Training and the EU FP7 SACSESS (Safety of Actinide Separation Processes) Consortium. He has presented to the Westminster Energy Forum on the Sustainability of Nuclear Power (resulting in a mention in the House of Lords) and has given oral evidence to Parliament on the future of the Nuclear Industry.
Professor Paul Smith
Professor Paul Smith’s research is concerned with the cyber security and resilience of critical networked systems, with a focus on digitalised critical infrastructures such as those found in the nuclear sector.
He is interested in understanding the risks and benefits associated with digital innovation for critical infrastructures and investigating approaches to ensuring their resilience when subject to disruptions, such as cyber-attacks. He has published extensively on these issues and has taken a leading role in numerous national and international research projects. Paul is enthusiastic about knowledge exchange and, for example, collaborates extensively with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), supporting their computer security programme.