Bio: Rachel completed her PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a research focus on turbulence measurements at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak in L-mode and I-mode plasmas. She constructed and operated Correlation Electron Cyclotron Emission diagnostics for measuring electron temperature fluctuations. She also modeled ASDEX Upgrade plasmas using gyrokinetic simulations.
Research Title: Development and testing of a physics-based I-mode pedestal model
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Plasma Science and Fusion Center
Dr. Kyle Callahan - 2024
Bio: Kyle Callahan is a postdoctoral researcher supporting the Experimental Science Division at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility. He graduated with his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in Spring 2024. His work involves studying turbulence in tokamak plasmas, with special emphasis on how turbulence behavior changes in the presence of different hydrogen isotopes. For his postdoc work, he plans to build on these skills to study the interplay between turbulence and energetic particles, focusing primarily on their interactions mediated by zonal (mean) flows.
Research Title: Understanding the influence of fast ions on turbulent zonal flow drive
Host Facility: General Atomics
Dr. Davis Easley - 2024
Bio: Davis Easley graduated from the University of Tennessee with a doctorate in Energy Science and Engineering with a focus in Fusion Energy. His dissertation was on optimizing plasma/material conditions for minimizing net erosion in tokamak divertors, with research conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory through the SCGSR Program. He now continues his working relationship with ORNL and ORISE, studying pedestal/exhaust optimization for fusion pilot plants.
Research Title: Development and validation of a two-way coupled core-edge model for low aspect ratio tokamaks
Host Facility: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Aaron Tran - 2024
Bio: Aaron is a postdoctoral researcher using kinetic simulations and theory to study weakly-collisional plasmas in the solar wind, intergalactic space, and an axisymmetric vacuum vessel in Stoughton, Wisconsin (i.e., the Wisconsin High-Temperature Superconductor Axisymmetric Mirror [WHAM] experiment). His focus is on wave-particle interactions and the linear and non-linear evolution of instability in such systems.
Research Title: 3D Kinetic Simulations of Plasma Stability in Mirror Machines
Host Facility: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Dr. Nick Beier - 2023
Bio: Nicholas Beier graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a Ph.D. in Physics studying high energy radiation sources from intense laser-plasma interactions. He is currently a DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow working jointly with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of Alberta, and the Institut national de la recherche scientifique to develop automated optimization techniques for betatron X-ray sources from laser wakefield accelerators through the use of deep learning and Bayesian optimization algorithms.
Research Title: Betatron X-ray Source Optimization at High Repetition Rates
Host Facility: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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.
Research Title: Machine-learning based profile prediction using fast-ion diagnostic data on DIII-D
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
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 discharge
Research Title: Physics of helium transport and exhaust in compact tokamak fusion pilot plant divertors
Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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 discharge
Research Title:Exploring novel methods to simplify stellarator design
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
Additional Information
Alumni Fellows
2022 Cohort
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Monica Gehrig 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
Lauren Nuckols
2021 Cohort
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Alexander Glasser
Dr. Curtis Johnson Research Title: Physics-informed machine learning for tungsten erosion diagnosis in DIII-D Host Facility: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Ian Ochs
Dr. 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 Laboratory
Dr. Noah Mandell Research Title: Electromagnetic gyrokinetic studies of the coupled pedestal/SOL system Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. 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 University
Dr. Paul Campbell Research Title: Ultrafast electron probing of magnetic reconnection driven by relativistic electrons Host Facility: Center for Ultrafast Optical Science - University of Michigan
Dr. 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 - Madison
Dr. 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 Sweden
Dr. Noah Hurst Research Title: Dynamics of electron plasma fluids subject to time-dependent external flows Host Facility: University of California, San Diego
Dr. Reed Hollinger Research Title: Highly relativistic laser interactions with ordered nanostructures Host Facility: Colorado State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Dr. 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.
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 Laboratory
Dr. 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-Madison
Dr. Ryan White Research Title: Magnetothermal Reconnection in High Temperature Toroidal Plasmas Host Facility: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. 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 Diego
Dr. Josh Burby Research Title: Variational engineering of gyrokinetic simulations Host Facility: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Dr. 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
