Reuben Cruise was offered work at the Energy Policy Research Group in the Cambridge Judge Business School as a Research Assistant in Electricity and Gas Market Modelling just one week after handing in his MPhil in Nuclear Energy dissertation! He has been working on long-term electricity and gas market pricing, and market designs to cope with the effect of increased renewable penetration in the electricity mix. This involved plant-level performance modelling, which the technical aspect of the MPhil helped with when it came to determining and explaining the ramping, starting, restarting and costs of individual nuclear plants. In addition, this is closely linked to the electricity market game that is part of the Nuclear Policy MPhil course, as Reuben was creating the same supply-demand curves but for real world applications.


Reuben started a PhD at Imperial College London, entitled  'Dry separation of minerals for Lunar In Situ Resource Utilisation (ISRU)'.  "I can't stress how instrumental the MPhil has been in preparing me for that! It was such a good experience (be that tough) and I'm really grateful to have had that opportunity." said Reuben.

Kris Ormandy is currently working as an Analyst at Aurora Energy Research in Oxford. His work is in the research and publications team focussing on distributed and flexible energy systems in the GB market. The energy markets are modelled up to 2040 and I will be researching how these systems will integrate into the electricity market over this period.

Tim Geller is currently working as a management consultant at Chartwell Consulting. His work entails finding hidden opportunity in different processes, where heat and mass balances are involved in my day to day life. One of the founding partners is also a Nuclear engineer from Cambridge, however, we haven’t had the exciting chance yet to have a nuclear plant power plant as a client. I have, however, worked in a number of Automotive, Chemical and small utilities across the UK, Europe and Asia. "The split between management, economics, engineering and nuclear physics from the MPhil course have given me confidence in delivering improvements and presenting them back to a number of different company management and investment firms." said Tim 

 Rachel Wible is currently a submarine Naval Officer in the US Navy. For the last year, she has been training in the design and operations of US Naval Reactors and will begin serving with their fleet and reactors within the year.

Toni Kunchev has stayed in Cambridge as the newest member of our Nuclear Energy Research Group. Toni’s work focuses on the multiphysics modelling of reduced-moderation boiling water reactors for transuranic waste burning and fuel breeding. These reactors are seen as an alternative to fast reactors in reducing the nuclear waste legacy and potentially providing long-term security of energy supply. “The technical skills I gained over the course of the MPhil and the supportive and vibrant research environment are crucial to my work. I hope my research makes a constructive contribution to our team and to our industry in general.” Toni is also involved as Student Chair in the organization of the PHYSOR2020 conference, to be hosted by the University of Cambridge in March-April 2020. This prestigious conference is an exciting opportunity to showcase the competence of the UK nuclear research community on the global stage.

After the course, Rob Hurn knew two things: He wanted to work in New York and secondly, he was more interested in the policy/economics side of things, that he  had been exposed to during the MPhil and he wanted to launch his career in that direction.