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…
Current Project: Stability of magnetic flux ropes in laboratory experiments
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…
Current Project: Investigating the Effects of Magnetic Topology on Transport in the H-Mode Pedestal
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 …
Current Project: electron beam mapping of magnetic fields on MUSE
My research involves a "lithium vapor box" to test a detached divertor concept. In this divertor design, a chamber with walls coated with liquid lithium at several hundred Celsius creates a dense lithium vapor on which the plasma radiates, recombines, and cools. Additional chambers with cooler liquid lithium walls condense the vapor that…
Current Project: Characterizing dielectric barrier discharges for disinfection
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…
Current Project: magnetic braking of protostellar disks including the Hall effect
Current Project: Parity-time symmetry in fluids and plasmas; Numerical algorithm for stochastic systems; Topological properties of plasma waves.
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…
Current Project: the generation of high harmonics with orbital angular momentum
Current Project: computational work on four-wave upconversion in a plasma
Current Project: resonant instabilities in dusty plasmas
Suying Jin (김소영) joined the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics in 2018, after graduating from UCLA.
Current Project: imaging runaway electrons at low density during startup and/or disruption at MST
Current Project: Particle-Push Feedback and Integration in a Discontinuous Galerkin Vlasov-Maxwell Code
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…
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…
Current Project: cross-beam energy transfer via forward raman scattering
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 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 interest for…
Nick grew up in sunny California. However, he had to say goodbye to the sun when he attended MIT for college. Although he enrolled as a nuclear engineering student, he quickly realized that his true passion resided in physics, and picked up physics as a double major at the beginning of his junior year. For his…
Current Project: propagation of slow modes in collisionless high beta plasmas
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,…
Current Project: Machine Learned Reconstruction for Finite Volume and Discontinuous Galerkin
Current Project: multi-ion transport in magnetized plasma
I am currently working with Nat Fisch, Elijah Kolmes, and Ian Ochs on the topic of wave-driven rotating torus (WDRT). We explore viscous heating both in the WDRT and, more generally, in devices where the primary dynamics are governed by the E x B rotation of plasma. In…
Current Project: modeling project related to LTX
Current Project: quasisymmetry optimization with adjoint methods
Current Project: symplectic integrators for guiding center dynamics
Current Project: wave particle resonance in a kinetic setting
Current Project: Gyrokinetics of high-field magnetic mirrors
Current Project: Error field correction in the permanent magnet stellarator prototype
My thesis is on the role of the magneto-shear-current effect in the solar tachocline. The goal is to understand how large scale magnetic field generation in the solar interior could arise from meso and small scale physics, a connection whose rigor is sorely lacking in the field. I am also interested in kinetic plasma physics and collisionless…
Current Project: Field penetration and tearing instabilities
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 currently…
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…
Laura （张歆） came all the way from the other side of the "big pond" otherwise known as the Pacific ocean. Born and raised in the beautiful seaside city of Dalian, China, her life-long dream is to live in a city with water. There are no beaches in Princeton, so the Delaware canal will just have to do for now.
In 2012, Laura came to the…
Current Project: shock-turbulence interaction with plasma viscosity