I received my PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017. I moved to a modeling team focused on the physics of fluid dynamics and worked a few years as a Sr. Simulation Engineer at Donaldson Inc. before transitioning back into academics, having found a great opportunity to work on the Lithium Tokamak Experiment- beta at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) as a postdoc and now Principal Investigator (PI) of this collaboration between PPPL and UW Madison. This research is in transition over to the ST-40 tokamak in the UK, and I am focusing on finding new opportunities to apply my blend of scientific research, analytical methods, and modeling skills, to government or industry positions.
A copy of my resume can be found here.
I’m an avid ultra trail runner and love spending time out in the woods. This photo is from the wilderness area around the Susquehannock State Forest in PA.
Current: I am the Principal Investigator on a research collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. I manage a $1.5M DOE grant to research high energy ions sourced via a neutral beam injector on the Lithium Tokamak Experiment-beta device. I study the impact of these ions on the plasma, focusing on beam fueling of the plasma (an essential goal for a device with lithium coated walls) as well as how their dynamics will impact plasma stability. To support this research, I develop and implement diagnostics which improves our ability to predict and model the plasma. A beam calorimeter, which leverages the differential heating of tungsten wire filaments, has been designed and installed on LTX-b and will measure the beam profile and will provide data on the injected beam power and energy. A Neutral Particle Analyzer, on loan from UW-Madison has also been retrofitted for use on LTX-b and will become the first direct measure of the high energy ion population within LTX-b.
These diagnostics, and the neutral beam itself, require considerable amounts of data processing, analysis, and modeling. I use a combination of tools, varying from large models like TRANSP developed and maintained by PPPL, down to models I code and develop myself to handle specific dynamics needed to answer design or research questions. An example of the importance of this multi-model approach can be seen in this paper.
Past: My PhD research focused on identifying a pressure limit in the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST) reversed-field pinch (RFP) plasma device. More specifically, a certain type of magnetic instability called a “bursting” mode was identified and thought to be related the population of high energy ions (“fast-ions”) injected via the neutral beam. At a certain fast-ion pressure threshold (or normalized to the magnetic field a beta threshold) the ions would non-linearly interact with the background magnetic field driving a perturbation unstable resulting in the loss of a large portion of the fast-ion population.
To measure this threshold I developed a collimated neutron detector, which by measuring the neutron emissivity across the plasma cross section allowed us to infer the fast-ion density and pressure profiles. This work involved extensive data modeling and analysis, but ultimately led to the first measurement of the fast-ion profile and bursting mode threshold, the first such measurement in an RFP.
A copy of my thesis can be found here.
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