Miles is the Director of Admissions and an Affiliated Lecturer within the Department of Engineering, the Director of Studies, College Associate Professor and Fellow in Engineering at Homerton College, and has previously held the positions of Admissions Tutor and Deputy Senior Tutor. For the 2023-2024 academic year, he left Homerton to take up the role of Acting Senior Tutor at Fitzwilliam College and is currently on a research sabbatical for the 2024-2025 academic year, working on radiation resistant materials for next generation fission reactors.
Prior to his arrival at Cambridge, Miles worked for Rolls-Royce on the design of the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Following its design approval, Miles joined Jesus College, where he obtained his PhD and was appointed as Director of Studies for Natural Sciences before moving to Homerton in 2019 to lead our Engineering programme. During his tenure, the College has doubled the number of students and fellows in engineering and built a strong engineering community around Homerton’s core values and aspirations. With regular bespoke events and workshops around careers, study skills and practical engineering skills, alongside a unique mentorship programme, Homerton Engineering provides a wider educational experience that has produced some of the highest achieving students at the University. 79.5% of Homerton engineers have achieved good honours and 25.4% have achieved first class degrees over the past four years, far exceeding the respective department averages of 67% and 24.9%.
Miles's expertise lie in the field of Nuclear Engineering. His research covers a wide range of topics within nuclear plant design and operation, including structural integrity, reactor physics, materials science and manufacturing. His published works cover the design of nanostructured materials, from quantum mechanics to thermokinetics, radiation damage modelling, hydrogen embrittlement, and the engineering and probabilistic safety assessment of integral and passive small modular reactors.
For prospective nuclear research students, Miles occasionally offers project supervision. Please enquire with the Administrator of the MPhil in Nuclear Energy for further details.
All engineering students at Homerton are supervised by Miles for both the first and second years of the Engineering Tripos, where he is responsible for Materials, Structures and Mechanics. Miles also lectures a number of modules for fourth year/masters level students. Students taking the Natural Sciences Part III Tripos can choose to take his M17 Nuclear Materials module, and within the MPhil in Nuclear Energy at the Department of Engineering, students can choose his introductory course on Materials Science for Engineers, and modules on Nuclear Safety and Nuclear Materials.
Outside of his teaching and research, Miles has worked in access and outreach for over 10 years. As Director of Admissions within the Department of Engineering, he is responsible for the department's outreach activities, from open days and subject workshops to representing the School of Technology on the Access and Participation Plan Scrutiny Group, and the STEM SMART Steering Group, an initiative to improve participation and attainment in STEM, for which he is also a supervisor. Miles is keen to collaborate on any new outreach and access opportunities and encourages prospective collaborators to get in touch.
