Awards
Stewart Prager
Stewart Prager receives Fusion Power Associates Distinguished Career Award
Stewart Prager, physicist and long-time fusion energy scientist who directed PPPL from 2009 to 2016, received a 2017 Distinguished Career Award from Fusion Power Associates (FPA), which provides students, media and the public with information about the status of fusion development and other applications of plasma science. Prager, a leading contributor to the advancement of plasma physics and fusion science, received the award at the 38th annual meeting of FPA in Washington, D.C.
The award for Prager, a professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, cited his “many years of dedication to advancing the prospects for fusion.” The citation pointed to his “decades of outstanding career contributions as a scientist, educator, manager, and advisor on all aspects of plasma physics, fusion energy and fusion policy.”
Prager was honored by the FPA award. “Working in fusion has been a remarkable pleasure,” he said, “and I am very pleased to receive this recognition from FPA.”
Poli, Johnson and Skinner named ITER Scientist Fellows
Three PPPL physicists have been appointed to prestigious positions as ITER Scientist Fellows. They join a network of internationally recognized researchers that will consult with ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in France, on plans and components for the project, which is designed to demonstrate the practicality of fusion energy.
Named to three-year terms are Francesca Poli, an expert in simulating the evolution of tokamak discharges, and principal research physicists David Johnson and Charles Skinner. “This is an exciting opportunity,” Poli said of the appointment, during which she will facilitate the integration and use of TRANSP, the PPPL-developed code that is used throughout the world, into the ITER computer system. “This will allow us to promote TRANSP for simulating ITER plasmas and will be good for the laboratory,” she said. “It will also enable us to improve TRANSP by developing new capabilities as part of this collaboration.”
Physicist Francesca Poli
Johnson and Skinner, who have worked together on projects at PPPL, also expressed excitement on learning of their appointments. Both have extensive experience developing and employing diagnostic instruments to measure the behavior of the hot, charged plasma that fuels fusion reactions. “It’s always fun to be recognized and I am looking forward to contributing to design review activities and other areas,” Skinner said. For Johnson, the position creates a new opportunity “for forging new territory, and that can be exciting.”
Physicist David Johnson, left, and Charles Skinner
Physicist Elena Belova
Elena Belova named to editorial board of Physics of Plasmas
Principal research physicist Elena Belova has been named to the editorial board of Physics of Plasmas, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Institute of Physics. Duties of board members, selected for their high degree of technical expertise, range from suggesting topics for special sections to adjudicating impasses between authors and referees that arise over manuscripts.
Belova, a PPPL physicist for more than 20 years, is expert at developing computer codes that are widely used in fusion research. “I like code development because it is algorithmic and codes can really help to understand the experimental results,” she said. “Visualizing things through computer simulations allows one to ‘see a picture,’ which is, as they say, better than a thousand words.”
Belova is the fourth PPPL staff member to be appointed to an editorial position in recent years. Richard Hawryluk, interim director of the laboratory, chairs the editorial board of the journal Nuclear Fusion; David Gates, principal research physicist and Stellarator Physics Division Head at PPPL, is editor-in-chief of the new online journal Plasma; and Igor Kaganovich, principal research physicist and deputy head of the PPPL Theory Department, serves as associate editor of Physics of Plasmas.
Three physicists win Edison Award
Physicists Manfred Bitter, Kenneth Hill, and Philip Efthimion have won a 2017 Edison Patent Award for an X-ray imaging device that could be used to produce the next generation of integrated circuits. The award marked the second consecutive year that the Research and Development Council of New Jersey has honored PPPL staffers. Charles Gentile, George Ascione and Adam Cohen previously received an Edison Award for their invention of an on-demand method to create an isotope widely used in medical imaging devices.
The X-ray imaging instrument can produce extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for computer chips, a technique that Efthimion, who heads the PPPL Plasma Science & Technology Department, calls “revolutionary”since it can create many more transistors chips than current technology. Hill noted that “It’s humbling and gratifying to do work that we enjoy and that we hope will eventually help mankind.” Bitter agreed that “it’s nice to come up with a new idea, if it is useful to somebody.”
Hill and Bitter have decades of experience with manipulating X-rays in X-ray crystal spectrometers, which measure the temperature and other parameters of the plasma in fusion experiments. Spectrometers following their design are used in tokamaks and stellarators around the world.
Inventors from left: Kenneth Hill, Philip Efthimion, and Manfred Bitter
Clayton Myers working on the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment
Clayton Myers wins doctoral thesis award
Clayton Myers, a 2015 graduate of the Program in Plasma Physics in the Princeton University Department of Astrophysical Sciences who did his research at PPPL, has won the 2018 Dissertation Prize awarded by the Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Myers, now a physicist at Sandia National Laboratory, received the award for his work on the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) at PPPL, which studies a process that occurs throughout the universe called magnetic reconnection. The annual prize goes to scientists who have completed their dissertations within three years of the award year.
Myers’ thesis, titled “Laboratory Study of the Equilibrium and Eruption of Line-Tied Magnetic Flux Ropes in the Solar Corona,” gave rise to several first-authored papers that included aNature magazine article describing a previously unknown mechanism that halts solar eruptions. The award cited his dissertation, “For developing a novel laboratory platform to investigate the magnetohydrodynamic instabilities that drive solar eruptions, and for discovering a new failed eruption regime where the torus instability is halted by a dynamic tension force.”
PPPL receives three national environmental awards
PPPL won three national honors for sustainable programs in 2017. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the Laboratory for its waste management program, which saved more than $250,000 by diverting 3,766 tons of waste from landfills. The agency awarded PPPL the 2016 Federal Green Challenge Regional Award for reducing waste and increasing its combined recycling rate from 84 percent in Fiscal Year 2015 to 97 percent in Fiscal Year 2016.
Earlier in the year, the U.S. Department of Energy presented a gold Green Buy Award to the Laboratory for its green buying program in fiscal 2016 — the fourth such award PPPL has received in the past six years. The Laboratory also received a U.S. EPA Region 2 Food Recovery Challenge Award for fiscal year 2015 for the Laboratory’s composting program.
Excess Property Coordinator Kyron Jones, left, and Computational Scientist Eliot Feibush, collecting used electronics during America Recycles Day