Fellows Central
Current Fellows
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Dr. Alvin Garcia - 2023
Bio: Alvin Garcia is an ORISE FES Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Plasma Control Group at Princeton University. He completed his PhD in Physics at the University of California, Irvine and his thesis was on Spin Polarized Fuel and Artificial Intelligence using data from the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. The AI part of his thesis was in collaboration with Kolemen and supported by the U.S. DOE SCGSR Fellowship. As a postdoc, he plans to design, propose, and lead experiments aimed at controlling dangerous Alfvén eigenmodes using machine learning-based methods on DIII-D.
Visualization: Coming Soon
Research Title: Machine-learning based profile prediction using fast-ion diagnostic data on DIII-D
Host Facility: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
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Dr. Felipe Novais - 2023
Bio: In 2020, after receiving his bachelor's in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (UTK), Felipe Novais joined Professor G. Ivan Maldonado's (UTK) group and completed his Master's and PhD in nuclear engineering. During his graduate school studies, Felipe had the privilege to spend time working only on fusion neutronics, which allowed him to gain knowledge and several skills in Monte Carlo radiation transport methodology on fusion nuclear devices. Recently, he was awarded the U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Energy Sciences Postdoc Fellowship and joined MIT to support the development of neutronics studies of the SPARC tokamak using OpenMC.
Visualization:
Fusion Nuclear Science Facility's neutron flux during operation. Simulation and post-processing were performed using OpenMC and Paraview, respectively.Research Title: Detailed Neutronics Analysis and Optimization of Fusion Nuclear Devices
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Dr. Rebecca Masline 2023
Bio: Rebecca Masline completed her PhD at the University of California San Diego in 2023, studying the physics of tokamak plasma exhaust in alternative divertor configurations using 2D multifluid edge simulation codes. She is continuing and expanding upon her thesis work during her ORISE fellowship, where she is using computer simulations to validate, study, and predict the behavior of injected helium in existing nuclear fusion experiments and helium ash in reactor-relevant regimes, with a focus
Visualization:
The electron temperature in a DIII-D tokamak dischargeResearch Title: Physics of helium transport and exhaust in compact tokamak fusion pilot plant divertors
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Dr. Todd Elder 2023
Bio: Todd Elder has been involved in plasma physics research since his first summer internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Inspired by the concept of "tiny nuclear generators" - a complete nuclear-based generator of power no bigger than a walnut - from Isaac Asimov's the Foundation series, he has been pursuing the simplification of stellarator coil sets, the single most complicated and expensive part of the device. While not wrestling with the difficulties of these three-dimensional devices, he enjoys cycling, olympic weightlifting, and the simple pleasures of life.
Visualization:
The electron temperature in a DIII-D tokamak dischargeResearch Title: Exploring novel methods to simplify stellarator design
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Dr. Elijah Kolmes - 2022
Bio: Elijah Kolmes is originally from Oregon. He completed his undergraduate studies in the physics department at Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Princeton's plasma physics program. He works with Dr. Nathaniel Fisch's research group, where his interests include plasma thermodynamics, multiple-species transport, separations, and aneutronic fusion.
Research Title: Differential Transport in Magnetized Rotating Fusion Plasmas
Host Facility: Princeton University
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Dr. Monica Gehrig - 2022
Bio: Monica Gehrig is a postdoctoral researcher supporting the Fusion Energy Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She graduated with her PhD from the Missouri University of Science and Technology Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Department in the fall 2022 term. Her work involves heat transfer and mass transport simulations for helium flowing in tritium breeding blankets using both 3D computational fluid dynamic Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes turbulence modeling and 1D thermal hydraulic modeling.
Research Title: Multi-fidelity modeling of gas flow in fusion reactor blankets
Host Facility: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
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Dr. Lauren Nuckols - 2022
Coming Soon
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Dr. Nicholas Beier - 2022
Coming Soon
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Dr. Alexander Glasser - 2021
Coming Soon
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Dr. Ian Ochs - 2021
Coming Soon
Additional Information
Alumni Fellows
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2021 Cohort
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Dr. Curtis Johnson
Research Title: Physics-informed machine learning for tungsten erosion diagnosis in DIII-D
Host Facility: Oak Ridge National LaboratoryDr. Caroline Sorensen
Research Title: Early Down selection on Liquid Breeder Tritium Extraction Technology through CFD-enabled Analytical Modeling
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology -
2020 Cohort
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Dr. Sahel Hakimi
Research Title: Bridging the gap between near-critical and overcritical target density in ion acceleration experiments at ultra-high intensities
Host Facility: Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryDr. Noah Mandell
Research Title: Electromagnetic gyrokinetic studies of the coupled pedestal/SOL system
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDr. Tyler Cote
Research Title: 3D Stability of the Edge Pedestal
Host Facility: General Atomics
International Host Facility: Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics - ASDEX Upgrade Facility -
2019 Cohort
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Dr. Daniel Groselj
Research Title: First-Principles Kinetic Studies of Radiative Turbulent Plasmas
Host Facility: Columbia UniversityDr. Paul Campbell
Research Title: Ultrafast electron probing of magnetic reconnection driven by relativistic electrons
Host Facility: Center for Ultrafast Optical Science - University of MichiganDr. Timothy Younkin
Research Title: A Computational Investigation of Kinetic Effects in Many-Species Fusion Plasmas
Host Facility: Oak Ridge National Laboratory -
2018 Cohort
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Dr. Benjamin Faber
Research Title: Optimizing Stellarators for Reduced Turbulent Transport
Host Facility: University of Wisconsin - MadisonDr. Luke Stagner
Research Title: Inference of the Runaway Electron Distribution Function from Experimental Measurements
Host Facility: General Atomics
International Host Facility: Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg SwedenDr. Noah Hurst
Research Title: Dynamics of electron plasma fluids subject to time-dependent external flows
Host Facility: University of California, San DiegoDr. Reed Hollinger
Research Title: Highly relativistic laser interactions with ordered nanostructures
Host Facility: Colorado State University and Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryDr. Ryan Sweeney
Research Title: Empirical study of the effects of runaway avoidance techniques on thermal and current quench mitigation, and of the efficacy of runaway avoidance and mitigation
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
International Host Facility: Joint European Torus (JET) - Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Oxfordshire, UK.
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2017 Cohort
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Dr. Anton Neff
Research Title: Characterization of Impurity Collector Probes in the DIII-D Scrape-Off Layer
Host Facility: Oak Ridge National LaboratoryDr. Jacob Nichols
Research Title: Whole-device modeling of DIII-D high-Z migration experiments
Host Facility: University of Tennessee - Knoxville,Dr. Marlene Patino
Research Title: Plasma Material Interaction Studies of Fusion Insulating Materials
Host Facility: University of California, San Diego -
2016 Cohort
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Dr. Matthew Beidler
Research Title: Modeling ELM Suppression Via Forced Magnetic Reconnection with NIMROD
Host Facility: University of Wisconsin-MadisonDr. Ryan White
Research Title: Magnetothermal Reconnection in High Temperature Toroidal Plasmas
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDr. Seth Davidovits
Research Title: Equation of state for rapidly-compressing plasma turbulence
Host Facility: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory -
2015 Cohort
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Dr. Matthew Affolter
Research Title: The Influence of Kinetic Effects on the Parametric Decay Instability of Near Acoustic Plasma Waves
Host Facility: University of California San DiegoDr. Josh Burby
Research Title: Variational engineering of gyrokinetic simulations
Host Facility: Courant Institute of Mathematical SciencesDr. Bob Mumgaard
Research Title: Unfolding the Physics of Dissipative and Advanced Divertors Using MultiSpectral Imaging on NSTXU
Host Facility: NSTXU and Massachusetts Institute of Technology