Collaborators

Office: C01 LSB 2105
Phone: (609) 243-3034
Email: ethier@pppl.gov

Dr. Stéphane Ethier is a Principal Computational Physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He is group lead for the Computational Partnerships and Technologies group within the Computational Sciences Department. He obtained a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in physics from the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Canada, and a Ph.D. in 1996 from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientific (INRS) in Varennes, Canada. His thesis project in laser-matter interaction highlighted the effects of high intensity, ultrashort laser pulses on solid-density plasmas using electron kinetic simulations. Prior to his appointment at PPPL, Dr. Ethier was a research associate in the Applied Physics group of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Princeton University, working on the development of a collisional-radiative code for X-ray laser applications.

Dr. Ethier’s work covers all aspects of high performance computing in support of PPPL’s large-scale scientific codes. His main research focus has been on global gyrokinetic particle-in-cell codes for the study of micro-turbulence instabilities in tokamaks. His other interests cover extreme-scale computing, shared memory parallelism with OpenMP, GPU programming with OpenACC, Advanced MPI, one-sided communication, etc.

Dr. Ethier served as the chair of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) Users Group Executive Committee from 2007 to 2014. He also served on the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility Users Group Executive Board and on the NERSC Policy Board.

Dr. Alexander V. Khrabrov is a Research Scientist specializing in gas discharge physics. His work focuses on phenomena relevant to material processing applications, including gas-phase and surface interactions, high-voltage breakdown, and non-local electron kinetics. His expertise encompasses theoretical modeling, numerical simulations, and the analysis of experimental data.

Dr. Alexander Khrabry is a Research Scholar at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. His work focuses on numerical simulations and the application of AI/ML methods to low-temperature plasmas, particularly for plasma methane pyrolysis and nanoparticle synthesis. His current research interests include developing surrogate models for dynamic plasmas and accelerating plasma simulations. Alexander earned his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University and subsequently served as a Postdoctoral Physicist at PPPL under the supervision of Igor Kaganovich.  

Hanna Schamis joined PPPL in 2023 as a Dr. Robert A. Ellis Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on plasma-material interactions in tokamaks, with an emphasis on wall conditioning. Her work involves boron powder injection experiments at KSTAR and atomic-scale simulations of boron surfaces. Prior to joining PPPL, Hanna received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Penn State University, where her dissertation focused on surface characterization of novel materials exposed to tokamak plasmas and implementation of new diagnostics to study fusion-relevant surfaces. 

Dmytro Sydorenko is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. His research interests include particle-in-cell simulation of plasmas of low-pressure discharges, and fluid and hybrid simulation of the Earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere. He received the Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, in 2006. 

Dr. Jian Chen is an Associate Professor at Sun Yat-sen University and a leading member of the Plasma and Fusion Science Group. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2021 from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. From 2018 to 2020, he was a visiting student at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and worked under the supervision of Igor Kaganovich. His research focuses on modeling low-temperature and fusion plasmas, plasma kinetics, and developing machine learning methods for complex plasma systems. His current research interests also include the physics of the structured optical/particle beam interaction with plasmas. 

Haomin Sun is a doctoral student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His research interests include turbulent momentum transport in tokamak using both theoretical and numerical methods.

Dr. Sharma became a member of the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) in September 2003 following the successful completion of a one-year Simulation Training Program (STP). During his tenure at IPR, he utilized fluid and particle-in-cell simulation techniques to investigate solitons and instabilities present in plasmas. In 2013, he obtained his PhD from Dublin City University in Ireland. His research encompassed the benchmarking of various analytical models to explore stochastic heating in CCP discharges. CCPs find extensive applications in the semiconductor processing industry, particularly in the fields of etching and thin film deposition. At present, he holds a position in the Basic Theory and Simulation Division at IPR, where his work revolves around comprehending and implementing diverse numerical methods and algorithms to examine sheath physics within the realm of plasma technology. His research focuses on applications such as nano-manufacturing, fusion machines, and plasma surface interaction. He has published over 50 research papers in internationally recognized journals and conferences, following a rigorous peer-review process. Additionally, he has had the privilege of delivering numerous invited talks at both national and international conferences, as well as esteemed research laboratories. As part of his research activities, he holds visiting researcher positions at prestigious institutions such as Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University (USA), Dublin City University (Ireland), National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore). Furthermore, he actively contributes to various research grants, both at the national and international levels, furthering the advancement of scientific knowledge and innovation in his field.