Check out the exciting work at DIII-D through first-hand experiences of our expert team members in the Yahoo Finance Next series episode on fusion energy. Evan Leppink, a graduate student at Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT, provides insights into the installation of a first-in-kind heating and current drive system.
A report authored by David Cohen-Tanugi, with contributions from PSFC researchers, was unveiled at the recent FusionXInvest conference hosted at MIT. The report contains nearly 30 opportunities for researchers, investors, and corporations to fill gaps in the burgeoning commercial fusion industry's supply chain.
Cohen-Tanugi will lead the Clean Energy & Fusion Channel, which Proto Ventures launched in early 2023 in partnership with the Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
A paper by Dennis Whyte, Carlos Paz-Soldan of Columbia University, and Brian D. Wirth of the University of Tennessee Knoxville explores academia's role in the development of fusion energy. The authors cite additional fusion faculty, private industry collaborations, and creative licensing strategies as essential for enabling the sustainable growth of a commercial fusion industry.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Grossi traveled to MIT to give the David J. Rose Lecture in Nuclear Technology and sign an agreement designating the PSFC as an IAEA Collaborating Center. Over the next four years, Dr. Cristina Rea will execute a workplan that will further the IAEA's "AI in Fusion" initiative by improving access to fusion data and providing educational opportunities for the development of the fusion workforce.
The Plasma Science and Fusion Center and four collaborating organizations are working together to modernize fusion data for use with AI, increase accessibility to data, and diversify participation in fusion science.
In April Lucio Milanese ('23) and Francesco Sciortino ('21) launched Proxima Fusion, the goal of which is to build a commercially viable stellarator fusion power plant.
The PSFC journeyed to the Young Women's Conferemce at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to inspire young women to consider science as a field of study and a career.
Recent MIT graduate Francesco Sciortino (MIT PhD’21) has been honored with the 2022 Piovesan Award for the best PhD thesis in "physics of controlled fusion."
“When I look up at the moon with my sweetheart, my wife of 48 years, I imagine that streaming from its dark side are electron holes that my students and I predicted and that we then discovered,” says Ian Hutchinson. “It’s quite sentimental to me.”
PSFC researchers and colleagues are using machine learning to track turbulent structures ("blobs") in fusion plasmas, which can affect the energy generated during fusion reactions.
AIP Publishing has selected MIT Professor Ian H. Hutchinson as the recipient of its 2022 Ronald C. Davidson Award for Plasma Physics for his paper, “Electron holes in phase space: What they are and why they matter.”
It is with great sadness and profound appreciation that we note the passing at age 89, of Dr. Donald Bruce Montgomery, a pioneer in the development and engineering of large-scale electro-magnets.
Noah Mandell, a postdoctoral fellow at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), is one of two recipients of a 2022 Frederick A. Howes Scholar in Computational Science award.
Graduate student Evan Leppink will explore a new way to drive current in a tokamak plasma using radiofrequency (RF) waves during his residency at DIII-D in San Diego, CA.
PSFC research scientist Theresa Wilks participated in research at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility that demonstrated how, in a fusion tokamak, a high-performance operating regime called Super H-mode can leverage the use of impurities to improve core-edge integration.
Hawaii's poet laureate Kealoha Wong ’99, who was an intern at the PSFC, will deliver the keynote address at the Classes of 2020 and 2021 Graduation Celebration.
PSFC Director Dennis Whyte received a 2022 University of Saskatchewan Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing his significant accomplishments since graduating from USask.
New five-year agreement will support SPARC science, increase graduate students and post-docs, and support interdisciplinary work towards fusion power plants
“One of the things that you get good at while at MIT,” says PSFC research scientist Sara Ferry, “is being able to start from nothing on a particular system or skill and knowing how to approach it in a way that’s effective.”
MIT research scientists Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez and Nathan Howard predict the temperature and density profiles of a magnetically confined plasma via first-principles simulation of plasma turbulence.