First Light Fusion, the world’s leading inertial fusion company, has today announced its co-founder, Dr Nick Hawker, will step into a brand-new role from 16 April 2024 as its Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), with Graham O’Keeffe, an experienced technology business leader, joining the business as Acting CEO.
As the company enters an exciting growth phase, the Oxford-based fusion leader is expanding and strengthening its executive leadership team.
As CSO, Nick Hawker will be responsible for its scientific mission and technology strategy, while continuing as a Board Member. Working with its 56 strong science and engineering team, Nick will focus on how First Light transforms its unique, proven technology into a commercially viable, scalable proposition for fusion energy production.
Nick co-founded First Light Fusion in 2011 alongside Professor Yiannis Ventikos, leading the company from a small spin out from the University of Oxford into a recognised world leader in inertial fusion technology.
The Board has now appointed Graham O’Keeffe as Acting CEO. Graham is an experienced business leader with significant expertise in fast growing deep technology companies. He recently led a turnaround as Chairman and CEO at DisplayLink, a developer of high-performance graphics processing semiconductor chips, with the company being acquired by Synaptics Inc.
Inertial fusion is now poised to enter the phase of commercialisation and energy production with the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the US having successfully demonstrated ‘Ignition’ in December 2022. As an inertial fusion company, First Light leverages the exact same physics as NIF, albeit using a different driver technology.
First Light Fusion recently recorded two significant technical achievements. This month the company announced a major breakthrough towards solving the ‘standoff’ challenge – a fundamental requirement for the design of its concept fusion power plant. In February, First Light also announced it had become the first fusion company to successfully fire a shot on Sandia National Laboratories’ Z Machine, breaking the attained pressure record, a major de-risking event for its amplifier technology, and continuing its long-term partnership with Sandia.
First Light’s executive leadership team is now: Graham O’Keeffe (Acting CEO); Dr Nick Hawker (CSO); David Bryon (CFO); Ryan Ramsey (COO); and Laura Hillier (General Counsel).
Bart Markus, Chair of First Light Fusion’s Board, said: “With recent scientific progress internally and the significant ‘ignition’ milestone at the National Ignition Facility, First Light is entering its most exciting chapter yet.
"Evolving and expanding our executive leadership team is a strategic decision to position First Light Fusion for future growth by leveraging a deeper well of expertise to drive the business forward. As part of this, Nick will move into a new role as CSO, giving him the capacity to lead our technical journey as we focus our long-term strategy on commercialising our unique amplifier technology and developing a commercially viable concept fusion power plant.
“I’m pleased to welcome Graham to the leadership team as Acting CEO, bringing in a wealth of senior experience in leading successful deep technology businesses.”
Dr Nick Hawker, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, said: “I’m excited to be taking up this new position. With recent advancements in inertial fusion, our unique technology remains as important as ever to solving fusion power. By expanding our leadership team, I can now focus my time on what I started doing back in 2011, leading and overseeing the technical and scientific strategy as we enter this new era of commercialisation of inertial fusion energy. The only difference now to then is I’ll be doing so with the incredible team of physicists and engineers I’m lucky to work with.”