Dr William Shields has recently been appointed as a Lecturer in Accelerator Physics in the John Adams Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London.
An image of Dr William Shields overlaid on an image of the Department of Physics’ Tolansky and Wilson buildings.
William is a longstanding member of the JAI, having joined the institute for his PhD in 2010, studying “Coherent Synchrotron Radiation Diagnostics for Investigating the Longitudinal Microbunching Instability at Diamond Light Source”. As a postdoctoral researcher, his research focused on particle accelerators for medicine, in particular compact proton therapy accelerators. Specialising in computational simulations, he co-developed highly detailed models of clinically operational gantries to study improvements to beam transport efficiency and particle losses, and their subsequent impact on radiation shielding performance. This was achieved through William’s significant contributions to the development of BDSIM, a Geant4-based Monte Carlo particle tracking code created at Royal Holloway. Today, William is one of BDSIM’s lead developers, supporting scientists across the globe in a broad range of accelerator physics applications, including high-energy colliders, light sources, medical accelerators, and more.
William is also one of the lead accelerator physicists in LhARA, an international, multi-disciplinary collaboration that includes the John Adams Institute. The LhARA collaboration seeks to transform ion-beam therapy, and together is designing a state-of-the-art facility to enable a systematic radiobiology research programme. William leads the accelerator design effort, integrating novel technologies into the LhARA machine, including laser-driven proton and ion beams, Gabor plasma lenses for beam capture, and a fixed field alternating gradient accelerator. William will continue his role in LhARA in his new lectureship appointment.
