Simon Bland

Plasma physicist and maker

[Simon Bland @SimonBlandIC]

@PeterShardlow @JStrucka When we do an MSci or PhD project we have to have a reasonable idea it can work, and have often done the preliminary investigations. With a UROP though we can do very blue skies based research, that often spins out into an entirely new avenue :)

[Simon Bland @SimonBlandIC]

Each summer we have undergrad interns (UROP stundents) join us for research. This year I am travelling but @JStrucka has kindly volunteered to run a project examining how foils explode into dense plasma. I've just seen some applications - choosing who to accept will be tough!

[Simon Bland @SimonBlandIC]

One of four 3d printers working at full speed to get ready for our teams experiments @SoM_esrf with colleagues from Technion. These capsules hold the water and electrodes for exploring how instabilities develop in warm dense matter when hit by a shockwave. Feb will be fun 🤪

[Simon Bland @SimonBlandIC]

@_Jack_Halliday I was feeling nostalgic, and they needed a small but cute name. Plus there are 5 ducklings, one for each xpinch. Louie, Phooey and Webby still to build once we get the bricks 😀

[Simon Bland @SimonBlandIC]

Introducing Huey and Dewey, the first of 5 new xpinch generators we will be building this year for xray diagnostics of warm, dense materials. Each will give ~100mJ of soft radiation from a few micron, sub ns source.

[Simon Bland @SimonBlandIC]

On the test bench new trigger systems we've been developing for the pulsed power community. Each is capable of 50kV, few ns risetimes to initiate large, high current switches. Simon Bott-Suzuki at UCSD is beta testing for us :)