Dr Karl Patrick Travis

Reader in Computational Physics and Nuclear Waste Disposal, University of Sheffield

Karl Travis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Charted Chemist. He graduated from UMIST in 1990, where he obtained a BSc in Chemistry (First Class with Honours), winning UMIST’s premier award: The Renold Prize. He obtained his PhD in the area of molecular simulation of liquids, from UMIST in 1993. Following Postdoctoral appointments at the Australian National University, Cornell, North Carolina State and Imperial College, he was appointed the A.H. Marks Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at the University of Bradford in 2000. In 2003 he joined the Immobilisation Science Laboratory in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield where he is currently a Reader in Computational Physics and Nuclear Waste Disposal.

He has over 20 years experience in computational modeling, with interests in liquid state theory, confined fluids, methodology and non-equilibrium theory and simulation. He is the CCP5 thematic leader in the area of non-equilibrium simulation. Together with Professor Fernando Bresme, he has created a triennial non-equilibrium conference series as well as a biennial non-equilibrium training school for PhD students.

In addition to modeling and theory, Karl has 13 years of experience in nuclear related research spanning both disposal and waste immobilisation. For the last 5 years he has also managed the day to day running of the Centre for Doctoral Training: Nuclear FiRST, at the University of Sheffield. Karl’s main nuclear-related focus is on developing an alternative disposal scheme for high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel, namely, deep borehole disposal (DBD). He leads the DBD research group at Sheffield which specialises in developing sealing methods for boreholes and underpinning modeling work. He recently received (together with his two co-authors) the George Stephenson medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers for the paper: “Deep Borehole Disposal of Nuclear Waste: Engineering Challenges” - adjudged the best paper in 2014 across all categories of ICE publications. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in DBD, and resolves major issues, making recommendations for implementation and further research. Karl Chaired the world’s first open, scientific conference devoted to DBD in June 2016.