Graduate Students

Joe Abbate
2018
Advisor: E. Kolemen

Current Project: machine learning for transport analysis and predictions

Joe is a lifelong NJ resident, growing up near Atlantic City and going to Princeton University for undergrad. His research centers around tokamaks, looking to bring together a variety of codes (both physics-based like TRANSP/ASTRA and a new machine-learning based…

Kendra Bergstedt
2018
Advisor: H. Ji
Vice President of Princeton Women+ in Plasma Physics

Kendra grew up in Roseville, Minnesota and got their undergraduate degrees in Physics and Math at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. While there, they became interested in computational physics and space plasma physics. Their time as a student of space physicists Prof. Cindy Cattell and Prof. Lindsay Glesener taught them how impactful…

Andrew Brown
2022
Advisor: H. Qin

Current Project: topological waves in plasmas

Nirbhav Chopra
2018
Advisor: Y. Raitses

Nirbhav Singh Chopra entered the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics in 2018 after receiving undergraduate degrees in Engineering Physics and Mathematics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

Nirbhav works with Dr. Yevgeny Raitses in the Laboratory for Plasma Nanosynthesis and on the …

Xu Chu
2021
Advisor: M. Zarnstorff

Current Project: electron beam mapping of magnetic fields on MUSE

Liam David
2022
Advisor: S. Cohen

Current Project: Stabilizing rotational modes in a field-reversed configuration

Emma Devin
2022
Advisor: Y. Raitses

Current Project: Fundamental physics of strongly emitting sheaths in low temperature plasmas

Harry Fetsch
2020
Advisor: N. Fisch

Current Project: Strong Coupling in Photoionized Plasma

Harry graduated from Harvey Mudd College in 2020 with a degree in physics, a humanities concentration in government, and the proud self-identification of "pretengineer." He volunteered in, and later helped to organize, STEM outreach programs for local students, and as a junior…

Thomas Foster
2021
Advisor: M. Kunz

Current Project: magnetic braking of protostellar disks including the Hall effect

Frank Fu
2020
Advisors: A. Bhattacharjee

Current Project: near axis expansion of quasisymmetric configurations

Yichen Fu
2017
Advisor: H. Qin

Current Project: Parity-time symmetry in fluids and plasmas; Numerical algorithm for stochastic systems; Topological properties of plasma waves.

Deepen Garg
2016
Advisor: I. Dodin

Current Project: Interaction of gravitational waves with plasma

Deepen Garg joined the program as a part of the 2016 cohort. After a short and very much unsuccessful stint in experimental physics, he learned the invaluable lesson to stick to theoretical physics, and has been working with Prof. Dodin to formulate a theory for the…

Jesse Griff-McMahon
2020
Advisor: W. Fox

Current Project: Laser Produced Plasma Diffraction Gratings

Alec Griffith
2017
Advisor: N. Fisch

Current Project: Collective Behavior in Relativistic Underdense and Pair Plasmas

Ben Israeli
2017
Advisor: A. Bhattacharjee

Current Project: resonant instabilities in dusty plasmas

Brian Jensen
2021
Advisor: Y. Raitses

Current Project: charging cynamics within dusty plasmas

Suying Jin
2018
Advisor: I. Dodin

Suying Jin (김소영) joined the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics in 2018, after graduating from UCLA.

Courtney Johnson
2021
Advisor: L. Delgado-Aparicio

Current Project: imaging runaway electrons at low density during startup and/or disruption at MST

Grant Johnson
2020
Advisor: A. Hakim

Current Project: Particle-Push Feedback and Integration in a Discontinuous Galerkin Vlasov-Maxwell Code

Sierra Jubin
2017
Advisor: I. Kaganovich
Secretary and Treasurer of Princeton Women+ in Plasma Physics

Sierra Jubin grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, and received her undergraduate degree in physics from Williams College in 2017. She joined the Princeton Plasma Physics Program in the fall of that year, and wandered into the field of low temperature plasma physics.

Sierra spent her first year doing experimental…

Euichan Jung
2022
Advisors: R. Maingi, B. Koel

Current Project: plasma material interaction

Huws Landsberger
2020
Advisor: W. Fox

Current Project: Magnetic Reconnection in High-Energy-Density Plasmas

Alex LeViness
2018
Advisor: N. Pablant
President of Princeton Women+ in Plasma Physics

Current Project: Measurement of fast ion losses in the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator

Alex LeViness (pronounced luh-VINE-ess) matriculated into the program with the class of 2018. She grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Dallas, Texas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Columbus, Ohio. She attended The University of Alabama, where she majored in…

Jessica Li
2018
Advisors: A. Reiman, M. Zarnstorff

Current Project: turbulence in negative triangularity plasmas

Jessica Li grew up in Frederick, MD and completed her undergraduate degree in Applied Physics with a minor in Computer Science at Columbia University in 2018. While there, she worked on numerical modeling of torsatron devices as part of the Columbia CIRCUS stellarator…

Dingyun Liu
2019
Advisor: G. Hammett

Dingyun Liu grew up in Wuhan, China, and she had her undergraduate education at University of Science and Technology of China. In the same year she received a bachelor's degree in applied and engineering physics, she joined the 2019 cohort of the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics. A summer program at UCLA in 2018 stimulated her…

Kush Maheshwari
2022
Advisor: H. Ji

Current Project: Magnetic Reconnection Thruster

Stephen Majeski
2019
Advisor: M. Kunz

Current Project: propagation of slow modes in collisionless high beta plasmas

Jacob Matthew Molina
2022
Advisor: A. Bhattacharjee

Current Project: Understanding the Mechanisms of Substorm Onset in the Earth's Magnetosphere

Michael May
2019
Advisor: H. Qin

Current: Project: quantum analogies of classical instabilities 

Michael Quackenbush May entered the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics in 2019 after graduating from Williams College with degrees in physics and religion in 2017. Between college and graduate school, he completed a masters degree at the University of Edinburgh in 2018,…

Nicholas McGreivy
2017
Advisor: A. Hakim

Current Project: Machine Learned Reconstruction for Finite Volume and Discontinuous Galerkin

Alejandro Mesa Dame
2022
Advisor: N. Fisch
Elena Mitra
2021
Advisors: N. Fisch, A. Reiman

Current Project: RF Current Condensation

Javier Morales Arias
2021
Advisor: R. Majeski

Current Project: modeling project related to LTX

Richard Nies
2019
Advisors: F. Parra Diaz

Current Project: gyrokinetics in quasisymmetric stellarators

Eric Palmerduca
2017
Advisor: H. Qin

Current Project: symplectic integrators for guiding center dynamics

Nicholas Pham
2021
Advisor: V. Duarte

Current Project: wave particle resonance in a kinetic setting

Margaret Porcelli
2022
Advisor: R. Goldston

Current Project: experimental development of the Lithium Vapor Box divertor

Tony Qian
2019
Advisor: M. Zarnstorff

Current Project: MUSE Permanent Magnet Stellarator

Adam Robbins
2022
Advisor: H. Ji

Current Project: particle acceleration in magnetic reconnection

Maxwell Rosen
2021
Advisor: A. Hakim

Current Project: Gyrokinetics of high-field magnetic mirrors

Tal Rubin
2019
Advisor: N. Fisch

Current Project: multispecies rotating plasmas

Adam Rutkowski
2020
Advisor: D. Gates

Current Project: Error field correction in the permanent magnet stellarator prototype

Silvia Trinczek
2022
Advisor: F. Parra Diaz

Current Project: neoclassical theory in strong gradient regions

Jace Waybright
2020
Advisor: J. Park

Current Project: Field penetration and tearing instabilities

Himawan Winarto
2018
Advisor: M. Kunz

Current Project: Tearing and Mirror instabilities related effect in current sheet formation

Himawan Wicaksono Winarto, also commonly known as Hima, joined the program in 2018 after graduating from the Physics program of the very same university. Before coming to Princeton, Hima grew up and live in Malang, Indonesia. He is…

Evan Yerger
2016
Advisor: M. Kunz

I am working to elucidate the role plasma waves play in magnetic reconnection that occurs when the solar wind collides with the Earth’s magnetosphere. The analysis is primarily conducted using data from NASA’s MMS satellites, but is also aided by simulation. It is my hope that this work furthers our understanding of collisionless magnetic…

Michael Zhang
2019
Advisor: M. Kunz

Current Project: minor ion heating in the solar wind in the presence of a helicity barrier