HIDDEN SYMMETRIES - Key Persons
Adelle Wright is a Staff Research Physicist in PPPL's Theory Department, working on theory development and numerical simulation of magnetically confined plasmas for fusion energy. Her current research focuses on nonlinear magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and stellarator theory.
Job Titles:
- Professor and Director of Center for Fusion Research
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Research Fellow at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
- Principal Research Physicist
- Professor
Allan Reiman is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and a Lecturer with Rank of Professor at Princeton University. He was the head of the Plasma Configuration Design Group for the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) from 1997 to 2000. He was Interim Head of the PPPL Theory Department from October 2009 to May 2010. In FY 2012 he led the OFES Joule Milestone effort, focusing on nonaxisymmetric plasma equilibrium calculations, involving 13 people and 4 institutions. This was followed up by a multi-institutional cross benchmarking study of nonaxysymmetric plasma equilibrium calculations led by Professor Reiman whose results were published in the journal Nuclear Fusion in 2015.
Prof. Reiman's personal research has focused particularly on plasma equilibria with non integrable magnetic field line trajectories. With a collaborator, he wrote the first plasma equilibrium code capable of handling non integrable field lines, and the code has evolved over the years. He collaborated with the German design group on calculations with the code for the W7X stellarator, and he helped in the use of the code in the design of the NCSX stellarator. He used the code to discover that the observed limit on the plasma pressure that could be supported in the W7AS stellarator device in Germany was caused by the emergence of a region of chaotic field line trajectories, obtaining quantitative agreement with the experimental observations. His present research focus is on the growth and suppression of magnetic islands in plasma magnetic confinement devices. He also has an interest in tokamak improvement via the addition of nonaxisymmetric coils, showing, in a 2007 Phys. Rev. Letter, that the dangerous vertical mode can be stabilized by a simple set of nonaxisymmetric coils placed at the bottom and top of the tokamak.
Role in the project: Professor Reiman has extensive experience in stellarator optimization, and he will lend his expertise to the group as it designs new and improved stellarators.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Professor Amitava Bhattacharjee is a Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He serves as Director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics, supporting a NASA-National Science Foundation (NSF) collaboration on Space Weather as well as Director of the Simons Foundation…
Job Titles:
- Fellow With the Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics Group of Columbia Engineering
- Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Antoine Baillod is a postdoctoral fellow with the Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics group of Columbia Engineering at Columbia University.
Computational plasma physicist studying turbulence in fusion plasmas and the optimization of stellarators in the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Education
New Mexico State University, Ph.D., Physics, 2010
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Advisory Board
- 43 University Professor
Job Titles:
- Scientist
- Scientist at the Swiss Plasma Center
Chris Smiet is a scientist at the Swiss Plasma Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is working with Joaquim Loizu on integrating measures of order and chaos in stellarator optimization.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Postdoctoral Research Associate
Daniel Ginsberg is postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mathematics at Princeton University, studying problems in fluid dynamics.
Job Titles:
- Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow
- Research Fellow ( Research Fellow )
Dr David Martinez-del-Rio holds a PhD in Mathematics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Robert MacKay, working on the numerical implementation of converse KAM results for the characterization of magnetic flux surfaces in toroidal symmetry. His…
David Pfefferlé's research revolves around the application of differential geometry to plasma physics problems with focus on magneto-hydrodynamics, field-line topology, guiding-centre theory and structure-preserving numerical methods. David Pfefferlé is a Lecturer in mathematics at the University of Western Australia since 2018. Before that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at PPPL. He received his PhD in plasma physics from EPFL.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Computer Science
- Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University
David S. Bindel is Associate professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Before joining Cornell in 2009, he was a Courant Instructor of Mathematics at NYU from 2006-2009. He works broadly in scientific computing, including in numerical linear algebra, numerical PDEs, and optimization, with a particular focus on problems motivated by applications in computer science and engineering. He received B.S. degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley. He is the recipient of the Householder Prize in Numerical Linear Algebra, and a Sloan Fellowship.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Plasma Theory and Modeling Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Donald Spong is a member of the Plasma Theory and Modeling Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and an unfunded collaborator in the "Simons Finding Optimum Magnetic Fields with Hidden Symmetries" project. His interests are in energetic particle confinement/instabilities in stellarators, and in 3D design optimization. Don was involved in original development of the STELLOPT code and the design optimization and analysis of the QPS and NCSX devices. Other interests include runaway electron physics, tokamak energetic particle instabilities, and development of gyrofluid/gyrokinetic models for energetic particle instabilities. Honors and appointments include: Fellow of the American Physical Society, University of Tennessee/Battelle science and technology award, Martin Marietta/ORNL publications and author of the year awards, and two appointments as Visiting Professor at the National Institute for Fusion Science (Japan's main stellarator laboratory with the LHD stellarator).
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Research Scientist
Dr. Joaquim Loizu is a theoretical plasma physicist and lecturer at the Swiss Plasma Center of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
He received his PhD at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2013) in theoretical plasma physics. He then joined the Max-Planck-Princeton Center for Fusion and…
Job Titles:
- Founding Principal Investigator
- Professor of Geological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas
Dr. Omar Ghattas is a Professor of Geological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the Director of the Center for Computational Geosciences and Optimization in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) and holds the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair…
Dr. Stuart R. Hudson is a staff research physicist in the Theory Department. After completing a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University he joined the Theory Department of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute as a post-doctoral Research Fellow, and then joined the Center…
Erol Balkovic is a graduate student at the Swiss Plasma Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. Under supervision of Joaquim Loizu and Jonathan Graves, he works on research related to the prediction of nonlinear saturation of Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities using equilibrium codes, namely the Stepped Pressure Equilibrium Code (SPEC). The goal of this research is to show that the saturated state of classical and neoclassical tearing modes (NTM) can be found using only a quick and simple equilibrium solve, rather than expensive integration of the full, time-dependent MHD model. Allowing for fast analysis of nonlinear saturation of MHD instabilities, this work may lead to significant benefits for stellarator optimization.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Mathematics at New York University 's Courant Institute of Mathematical
Georg Stadler is a Professor of Mathematics at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Before joining New York University in 2014, he was a research scientist at the Institute of Computational Engineering and Sciences at UT Austin. His research interests are in PDE-constrained Optimization, Computational Inverse Problems and Uncertainty Quantification, and Parallel Algorithms and Solvers. His research is often driven by real-world applications from engineering or natural sciences. He is co-recipient of the Springer CSE Prize in 2011, was a finalist for the Gordon Bell Prize in Supercomputing in '08, '10 and '12 and is a co-recipient of the Bell Prize in 2015 for illustrating extreme scalability of implicit solvers for systems arising from nonlinear, highly heterogeneous and indefinite partial differential equations.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Mathematics Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Principal Research Physicist
Harry Mynick is a Principal Research Physicist (emeritus) in the PPPL Theory Department. He has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1996. His principal areas of expertise are in plasma transport, particularly in 3-dimensional toroidal systems, energetic particle dynamics, and canonical mechanics, and has been a pioneer in the development of neoclassically-optimized[1,2] and, more recently, of turbulence-optimized[3,4] stellarator configurations. He will be contributing to the Simons collaboration principally in the areas of transport and optimization.
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor ( Founding Principal Investigator )
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Advisory Board
- 43 University Professor
- University Professor of Mathematics
Job Titles:
- Director of the Program of Applied
- Professor ( Founding Principal Investigator )
- Professor of Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University
Peter Constantin is the John von Neumann Professor of Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University and the Director of the Program of Applied and Computational Mathematics. Constantin obtained his PhD in 1981 at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the direction of Shmuel Agmon with a dissertation on…
Job Titles:
- Business Manager
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona
- Department of Mathematics
Professor Lise-Marie Imbert-Gerard is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Before that she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, where she was also member of the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling and member of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Research Scientist
- Associate Research Scientist ( Deputy Director )
Matt Landreman's research explores confinement and transport in shaped magnetic fields, especially those with hidden symmetry, and the control of this shaping with electromagnetic coils. Of particular interest is the translation of equations and insights from physics into numerical codes for practical computation. Some examples of this work…
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute
Mike O'Neil is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute at NYU. The main areas of his research include analysis-based fast algorithms, scientific computing, computational PDE and integral equations, and numerical analysis. Recently, O'Neil has been focused on constructing solvers for various problems in computational…
Job Titles:
- Head of Stellarator Theory Division
Per Helander is one of four directors at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP in Greifswald, Germany, where he leads the Stellarator Theory Division. His predecessor Jürgen Nührenberg, who pioneered the science of stellarator optimization still works in the Division. IPP is home to the world's largest and most advanced stellarator, Wendelstein 7-X, which is the first full-scale testbed of stellarator optimization. The Stellarator Theory Division is deeply involved in the planning and evaluation of experiments in W7-X as well as in the development of fundamental theory of stellarator plasmas.
Per Helander's personal research portfolio spans most aspects of fusion plasma physics, including neoclassical transport theory, magnetohydronamic, microinstabilities and turbulence. In addition to his role at IPP, he is also a professor of theoretical physics at Greifswald University, where he teaches plasma physics, electrodynamics, fluid mechanics and general relativity.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor ( Co - Investigator )
- Senior Fellow of the ANU
A/Prof. Matthew J. Hole is a Senior Fellow of the ANU, and leads the Plasma Theory and Modelling group at the ANU. His principal field of research is magnetohydrodynamics, fluid modelling, and wave analysis of fusion, industrial, and astrophysical plasmas. Matthew is the founding Chair of the Australian ITER Forum, a research network spanning…
Robert Dewar BSc (Melb), MSc(Melb), PhD (Princeton) is an Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was Convenor of the former ARC Complex Open Systems Research Network (
Job Titles:
- Director of Mathematical Interdisciplinary Research
Robert MacKay FRS CPhys FInstP CMath FIMA is a Professor in the Mathematics Institute of the University of Warwick and Director of Mathematical Interdisciplinary Research at Warwick. He was founding Director of Warwick's Centre for Complexity Science from 2007-15 and President of the (UK) Institute of Mathematics and its…
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at UW - Madison
- Assistant Professor of Physics
Rogerio Jorge is an Assistant Professor at UW-Madison, USA. Before moving to Madison, he was the Principal Investigator of an EUROfusion's Enabling Research Grant at IST Lisbon, Portugal, and an FCT CEEC Grant at the Junior Researcher level. At IST, he worked on fusion energy, in particular stellarator optimization, and was the Professor of the…
Dynamical systems theory: Geometric and statistical methods of chaotic dynamics, Discovery of structures in phase space transport, Partial control of escape and transition dynamics, Phase space structures based control. Data-driven methods: Transport barriers in atmosphere and ocean, Machine learning phase space structures, Reduced…
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Department Manager
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Thomas M. Antonsen Jr. is currently Professor of Physics, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor of Electrophysics. Professor Antonsen has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (U.C.S.B.), the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Institute de…
Job Titles:
- Associate Research Scholar