Ben Britton


Thomas Benjamin Britton is a materials scientist and engineer based at Imperial College London. He is a specialist in micromechanics, electron microscopy and crystal plasticity. In 2014 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, a society of which he then became a Fellow in 2016.

Early life and education

Britton grew up in Oxford and attended Magdalen College School, Oxford. He graduated with a Master of Engineering in materials science from the University of Oxford in 2007 where he was a student of St Catherine's College, Oxford. In 2010, he completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in materials science, specifically for an electron backscatter diffraction study of titanium and its alloys supervised by.

Research and career

After completing his PhD, Britton spent two years in Oxford as a postdoctoral research associate studying materials for fission and fusion power. He received a fellowship in nuclear research in the faculty of engineering at Imperial College London in 2012. In 2015, he was appointed a lecturer in the centre for nuclear engineering at Imperial supported by a Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship establishing the "better understanding of materials to make safer reactors"., Britton is a senior lecturer in materials science and the centre for nuclear engineering. He is the course director of Imperial's Master of Science program in advanced nuclear engineering and deputy director of the centre for nuclear engineering.
His first PhD student, Vivian Tong, worked on zirconium alloys, and solved a longstanding issue in the zirconium manufacturing sector. Britton develops high resolution microscopy techniques, including forescatter electron imaging for topographic and phase contrast.

Public engagement

Britton has led outreach and engagement activity aimed at changing public perception about nuclear energy,
and regularly blogs about early career academic life. He has appeared on the podcast Scientists Not the Science. he serves on the executive committee of Science is Vital, a grassroots campaign formed in 2010 to combat threats to the UK's research & development budget. He is a trustee of the charity Pride in STEM, through which he was nominated for the Gay Times honours in 2017. He spoke at the Institute of Physics pride of physics celebration in August 2018.
In his role as deputy director of Imperial's centre for nuclear engineering, Britton was a co-signatory of an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, urging the then-recently elected President of France to keep the nation's nuclear power plants open in order to keep carbon emissions low. He has also contributed written evidence to the House of Lords about nuclear technology.

Awards and honours

In 2014 Britton was awarded the IOM3 Silver Medal. In 2016 he won one of five awards for the engineers trust young engineer of the year, being described by the Royal Academy of Engineering as one of the UK's "future engineering leaders". In 2014 he was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.