David Jenkins
David Jenkins is a Reader at the University of York in the UK. Following his DPhil in experimental nuclear physics, he held postdoc positions at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Liverpool, before taking up a prestigious 5-year EPSRC Advanced Fellowship at the University of York in 2002. This led on to a permanent academic position at the University of York in 2007 and promotion to Reader in 2010. David's work crosses the boundaries between nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics (the origin of the chemical elements). He has led experiments at many of the leading laboratories for nuclear physics worldwide such as CERN but also at laboratories as far afield as Japan and South Africa. Research interests include nucleosynthesis in exploding stars like nova and X-ray bursts, the structure of exotic proton-rich nuclei and shape coexistence in heavy nuclei. In particular, he is interested in alpha-clustering in light nuclei which will be the topic of the USIAS fellowship. Aside from research, David lectures on astrophysics and supports observational astronomy work. He is also very interested in public engagement as a means of explaining the science to a broader audience. Between 2007 and 2009, he held an STFC Science-in-Society Fellowship which bought out some of his time for public engagement work. In particular, he focussed on running continuous professional development courses on nuclear physics and applications for high school teachers. In addition, he is Chair of the Institute of Physics Nuclear Physics Group.
As part of his Fellowship, David Jenkins is working on the project Electromagnetic transitions as a probe of clustering in nuclei.