About us

Edward Snedden

Edward Snedden is head of ASTeC’s Femtosecond Lasers and Timing Group. He leads a team of scientists in the development of advanced optical and electronic technology for particle accelerators, including the CLARA FEL test facility at STFC Daresbury Laboratory. His research interests include high-gradient acceleration and he is a member of the UK Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Steering Committee (PWASC). As a member of the UK XFEL leadership team, Edward is responsible for engaging with international stakeholders including overseas XFEL facilities. He will examine collaboration and investment options which can help deliver the advanced capabilities outlined in the UK XFEL Science Case. 

Storm Mathisen 

Storm is a Senior Diagnostics and Instrumentation Engineer in the Accelerator Diagnostics and Instrumentation Group of ASTeC at STFC Daresbury Laboratory. Since 2018, he has lead research and development in novel beam diagnostics systems and data acquisition systems, and provides expertise in electron beam diagnostics for users of ASTeC’s facilities. Prior to this, he carried out research at Lancaster University’s Engineering Department in microfabrication of W-band vacuum amplifiers. He graduated from Swansea University in 2016 with a BEng in Aerospace Engineering. 

Peter Williams

Peter is work package leader for UK XFEL High Energy Beams. He is a Principal Accelerator Physicist of 18 years standing at STFC Daresbury Laboratory. Peter has made significant contributions to the understanding, design and commissioning of electron linear accelerators for UK and worldwide scientific facilities. He predominantly applies this to XFEL drivers, but also particle and nuclear physics colliders, and in the semiconductor industry. Peter is a leading expert in Energy Recovery Linacs, having more than a decade’s experience on Daresbury’s ALICE ERL driven FEL. Additionally, Peter now leads the beam commissioning of the CLARA FEL test facility. 

Neil Thompson

Neil’s main specialism is FEL physics and technology. He has made important contributions to several UK FEL projects, from 4GLS to the New Light Source and now UKXFEL. He led the design and commissioning of the UKs only (to date) free-electron laser – the ALICE Infra-Red FEL – which operated at Daresbury Laboratory from 2010 to 2016. Neil’s research focusses on methods of novel FEL output, from ultrashort pulse generation to new techniques for producing transform limited pulses at short wavelengths. Neil also designs accelerator magnets and undulators.    

Mark Roper

Mark is a Principal Beamline Scientist working in the Femtosecond Lasers and Timing (FLT) group in the ASTeC department at Daresbury Laboratory. He is managing the photon beamlines and diagnostics work package for the UK XFEL project. 

His career started on the Synchrotron Radiation Source at Daresbury where he became a specialist in the design, modelling and operation of soft X-ray beamlines and grating monochromators. He has also developed optical systems from the THz to hard X-ray on the SRS, DIAMOND and ALICE light sources, and has worked with ultra-fast lasers on the photo-injector system on the CLARA linac. He founded the Optics Metrology Laboratory at Daresbury for measuring form and texture of ultra-precision optical surfaces. His work for the FLT group spans most aspects of optical systems from design and modelling, through engineering, to procurement and installation, and commissioning and operation. 

Dave Walsh

Dave is the Synchronous Sources work package lead. He first came to Daresbury as a postdoctoral researcher working on laser based longitudinal profile monitors for the CLIC project. His role as a Senior Laser Scientist is backed by an MSc and a PhD in laser science from St Andrews, and he contributes to most of the laser activities of ASTeC, as well as designing optical imaging systems. He has recently demonstrated a new electrooptic longitudinal profile measurement using CLARA. which overcomes fundamental limitations of the technique. 

Matt Wilson

Matt Wilson is head of the Detector Development Group and Individual Merit Scientist in STFC’s Technology Department. He has over 100 publications in the area of detector development and applications and generated multi-million pounds of research funding. His group has delivered instruments to industry, universities, synchrotrons, laser facilities, neutron sources and the European XFEL. Matt joined STFC on the graduate scheme in 2006 after completing his masters in Physics at the University of Nottingham. He was originally recruited to work on the grant which funded the HEXITEC detector and has subsequently driven the increase in TRL, developed new cameras, grown a user community and overseen new ASIC designs around similar hard X-ray technology. Matt is the STFC lead for XIDyn, a new integrating detector for Diamond II and ESRF-EBS and includes the EuXFEL in the collaboration. He has projects exploring Si and LGAD detectors for lower energy X-ray applications that, along with the hard X-ray work, is well matched to the breadth of beamlines proposed for a UKFEL.   

Dave Dunning

Dave is leading the option to build a next generation XFEL in the UK. He is a Senior Physicist at STFC Daresbury Lab, specialising in free-electron lasers. He was part of the team that commissioned and operated the ALICE infra-red FEL at Daresbury, and he has extensive experience in designing FEL facilities. He completed his PhD at the University of Strathclyde in 2015 on the topic of generating ultra-short pulses of light from XFELs and has published several papers on the topic. He’s played a major role in UK XFEL since the start of the Science Case phase – his role involves understanding the requirements of the various use cases and meeting them through integrating the facility design work.

Deepa Angal-Kalinin

Deepa Angal-Kalinin is Head of the Science Division in ASTeC. She has more than 35 years of experience in the field of accelerator physics. During this time, she has contributed to the design and commissioning of several light source projects, collective effects in LHC and global design effort for International Linear Collider project.  She currently leads the CLARA project at Daresbury Laboratory including the user exploitation programme. She is a member of the UK XFEL leadership team and is responsible for engaging with European XFEL/DESY.    

Boris Militsyn

Boris Militsyn is Lead low Energy Beam scientist in STFC ASTeC. His primary responsibility is the development of electron injectors and low energy beamlines for electron accelerators at ASTeC. During his career he participated in numerous FEL projects starting from Free Electron Maser for Nuclear Fusion (FEM) and FELICE (Free Electron Laser for IntraCavity Experiments) in Netherlands to almost all FEL projects at ASTeC (ALICE, 4GLS, NLS) during his 18 years in UK. He has also been leading the development of electron injectors for different projects such as CLARA/VELA, RUEDI and medical linacs starting from conceptual design to commissioning and operation of the machines. In the framework of UKXFEL project Boris leads the Low Energy Beamline Work Package that covers whole scope of work starting from conceptual design of the beamline to technical realisation of individual components such as photocathode gun and its infrastructure, bunch compression section and low energy booster/accelerator. 

Barry Fell

Barry is Senior Engineer in the Projects and Mechanical Engineering Group of STFC Technology Department and is currently an engineering work package leader for CLARA – a 250MeV accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory (among other projects).  

Barry joined STFC Daresbury Laboratory as FEA Engineer, later overseeing design and construction of several high brightness wiggler beamline upgrades at the Daresbury SRS as projects engineer. 

In 1999 he co-founded Instrument Design Technology Ltd, and over 4 years successfully delivered whole beamline sectors commercially. After leaving IDT, he oversaw the engineering build of Astra Gemini before returning to Daresbury in 2007. He subsequently worked on several Daresbury facilities and photocathode R&D. In addition, he was appointed as engineering work package lead on a number of larger-scale facility feasibility study CDRs (4GLS, NLS).  

He will be looking at the costs, practicalities and other engineering delivery aspects of whatever options emerge as the best opportunities for the UK to deliver high impact science, through the next generation of XFEL.