Helen Swan

Helen Swan is based at the Culham site of the National Nuclear Laboratory, and has 20 years of post-doctoral technical research experience in both academia and industry since completing her undergraduate degree and PhD in physics at Oxford University and University College London, respectively.

Since joining NNL in 2010, Helen has gained a wealth of experimental and computational experience in the field of radiation damage in both steels and zirconium-based alloys, devising several experiments to characterise the microstructure of materials using various techniques including neutron and synchrotron X-ray diffraction together with complementary numerical modelling.

Helen has a passion for the cutting-edge research and development work that she is privileged to perform at NNL, and is currently the Technical Lead on a complex and long-term multi-disciplinary project in the subject of hydrogen trapping. She is particularly interested in emergent issues in the nuclear energy field that relate to zirconium oxidation and hydrogen trapping in zirconium alloys, and has presented extensively in this area.