Aref Eshkevarvakili

I am a nuclear physicist in the the Berlinguette Group. This is a group at the University of British Columbia as an interdisciplinary team of >40 scientists and engineers who design and build electrochemical reactors to power the planet. I am a member of the advanced nuclear fusion team where low energy regimes in solid-state materials are more interesting. We specialize in the development of benchtop plasma fusion systems and materials that allow for expansive studies in underexplored energy regimes for nuclear fusion. Our mission is to create a low-cost energy source that can scale within the span of a human lifetime. Therefore, my position is focusing on signal detection for a project focused on studying low energy fusion in solid-state materials. I also contribute to the coordination of experimental and analytical investigations by designing, constructing, installing, and maintaining scientific analytical instrumentation of a complex and technical nature. I work in close collaboration with a team of scientists, engineers, and software developers at UBC to generate solutions that meet all respective design criteria for various components of the project and will contribute to project planning, high level communications with stakeholders, and technical mentorship of other team members.

Our fusion sub-group is currently exploring Lattice Confinement Fusion (LCF), i.e. nuclear fusion within the confines of a solid, such as Pd metal. We aim to quantify how fusion reaction cross sections are affected by perturbations to the chemical and nuclear environment of the reaction feedstock. We are in the process of developing an experimental platform to generate precise, accurate, and repeatable data sets at incident particle energies between 0-50 keV. The experimental investigation of fusion processes in this largely unexplored research field will require the development of new measurement instrumentation and cutting-edge analysis techniques in order to inform the development of fundamental scientific theory.