People

David Bindel
Associate Professor of Computer Science
(Director)

David S. Bindel is Associate professor of Computer Science at Cornell University.  Before joining Cornell in 2009, he was a Courant Instructor of Mathematics at NYU from 2006-2009.  He works broadly in scientific computing, including in numerical linear algebra, numerical PDEs, and optimization, with a particular focus…

Matt Landreman
Associate Research Scientist
(Deputy Director)

Matt Landreman’s research explores confinement and transport in shaped magnetic fields, especially those with hidden symmetry, and the control of this shaping with electromagnetic coils. Of particular interest is the translation of equations and insights from physics into numerical codes for practical computation. Some examples of this work…

Thomas M Antonsen Jr.
Distinguished University Professor
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Thomas M. Antonsen Jr. is currently Professor of Physics, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor of Electrophysics.  Professor Antonsen has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (U.C.S.B.), the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Institute de…

Aaron Bader
Staff Scientist
(Affiliate)
Antoine Baillod
Postdoctoral Research Scientist

Antoine Baillod is a postdoctoral fellow with the Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics group of Columbia Engineering at Columbia University.

Erol Balkovic
Graduate Student

Erol Balkovic is a graduate student at the Swiss Plasma Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. Under supervision of Joaquim Loizu and Jonathan Graves, he works on research related to the prediction of nonlinear saturation of Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities using equilibrium codes, namely the Stepped Pressure Equilibrium Code (SPEC). The goal…

Lance Beden
Webmaster

Lance Beden pronunciation:
  

Amitava Bhattacharjee
Professor of Astrophysical Sciences
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Professor Amitava Bhattacharjee is a Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He serves as Director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics, supporting a NASA-National Science Foundation (NSF) collaboration on Space Weather as well as Director of the Simons Foundation…

Allen H Boozer
Professor of Applied Physics
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Allen Boozer has developed many of the concepts that underlie modern stellarator theory.  For this he was elected to scientific membership in the German Max Planck Society (Auswärtiges Wissenschafliches Mitglied der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) in 1989 and awarded the Alfvén Prize by the Division of Plasma Physics of the European Physical…

Stefan Buller
Postdoctoral Research Associate

Particle and energy transport in tokamaks and stellarators, the two leading concepts for confining plasma to extract energy from nuclear fusion. Using analytical and numerical tools to study how particles and energy leaks out of these magnetically confined plasmas.

Optimization of stellarators. Finding out how to tell a computer what…

Joshua W Burby
Staff Scientist (Theoretical Division)
(Affiliate)

Mathematical, theory, modeling, and simulation at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

John Cary
Professor of Physics
(Advisory Board)
Peter Constantin
John von Neumann Professor
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Peter Constantin is the John von Neumann Professor of Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University and the Director of the Program of Applied and Computational Mathematics. Constantin obtained his PhD in 1981 at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the direction of Shmuel Agmon with a dissertation on…

Robert Dewar
Emeritus Professor
(Founding Principal Investigator)
Biography

Robert Dewar BSc (Melb), MSc(Melb), PhD (Princeton) is an Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was Convenor of the former ARC Complex Open Systems Research Network (

Nathan Duignan
Postdoctoral Associate
(Affiliate)
Susan Duncan
Department Manager
Benjamin Faber
Staff Scientist
(Affiliate)

Computational plasma physicist studying turbulence in fusion plasmas and the optimization of stellarators in the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Charles Fefferman
Herbert E. Jones, Jr. '43 University Professor of Mathematics
(Chair, Advisory Board)
Omar Ghattas
John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Dr. Omar Ghattas is a Professor of Geological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the Director of the Center for Computational Geosciences and Optimization in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) and holds the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair…

Daniel Ginsberg
Postdoctoral Research Associate
(Postdoctoral Scholar)

Daniel Ginsberg is postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mathematics at Princeton University, studying problems in fluid dynamics.

Andrew Giuliani
Research Scientist
(Affiliate)
Chris Hegna
Harvey D. Spangler Professor
(Founding Principal Investigator)
Per Helander
Head of Stellarator Theory Division
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Per Helander is one of four directors at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP in Greifswald, Germany, where he leads the Stellarator Theory Division. His predecessor Jürgen Nührenberg, who pioneered the science of stellarator optimization still works in the Division. IPP is home to the world’s largest and most advanced stellarator,…

Sophia Henneberg
Staff Scientist
(Affiliate)
Matthew Hole
Associate Professor
(Co-Investigator)

A/Prof. Matthew J. Hole is a Senior Fellow of the ANU, and leads the Plasma Theory and Modelling group at the ANU.  His principal field of research is magnetohydrodynamics, fluid modelling, and wave analysis of fusion, industrial, and astrophysical plasmas.  Matthew is the founding Chair of the Australian ITER Forum, a research network spanning…

Stuart Hudson
Staff Research Physicist
(Affiliate)

Dr. Stuart R. Hudson is a staff research physicist in the Theory Department. After completing a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University he joined the Theory Department of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute as a post-doctoral Research Fellow, and then joined the Center…

Lise-Marie Imbert-Gérard
Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Professor Lise-Marie Imbert-Gerard is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Before that she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, where she was also member of the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling and member of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology.

Rogerio Jorge
Research Scientist
(Affiliate)

Dr. Rogerio Jorge is Research Scientist at IST, Lisbon, Portugal. He is currently the Principal Investigator of a EUROfusion’s Enabling Research Grant [link1, link2] and an FCT CEEC Grant at the Junior Researcher level, 2021 edition [link].  Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics,…

Nikos Kallinikos
Academic Fellow
(Affiliate)

Research Interests: Symmetry Theory of Differential Equations, Hamiltonian Mechanics, Plasma Physics, Integrable Systems, Soliton Equations

Nikos is now a Academic Fellow affiliated with:

Math Department, University of Western Macedonia, Greece Physics Department, International Hellenic University,…
Alan Kaptanoglu
Postdoctoral Research Associate
(Affiliate)

Dr. Alan Kaptanoglu received a B.S. in Physics from Stanford University in 2016 and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington in 2021. He joined the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP) at the University of Maryland in 2022. He is currently working on stellarator optimization with Dr. Matt Landreman in…

David Keyes
Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
(Advisory Board)
Bahram Khalichi
Post Doctoral Fellow
(Affiliate)
Boris Khesin
Professor of Mathematics
(Advisory Board)
Kristie Lindsey
Business Manager
Jim-Felix Lobsien
Postdoctoral Associate
Joaquim Loizu
Associate Research Scientist
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Dr. Joaquim Loizu is a theoretical plasma physicist and lecturer at the Swiss Plasma Center of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. 

He received his PhD at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2013) in theoretical plasma physics. He then joined the Max-Planck-Princeton Center for Fusion and…

Robert MacKay
Director of Mathematical Interdisciplinary Research
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Robert MacKay FRS CPhys FInstP CMath FIMA is a Professor in the Mathematics Institute of the University of Warwick and Director of Mathematical Interdisciplinary Research at Warwick. He was founding Director of Warwick’s Centre for Complexity Science from 2007-15 and President of the (UK) Institute of Mathematics and its…

David Martinez-del-Rio
Research Fellow
(Research Fellow)

Dr David Martinez-del-Rio holds a PhD in Mathematics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Robert MacKay, working on the numerical implementation of converse KAM results for the characterization of magnetic flux surfaces in toroidal symmetry. His…

Bharat Medasani
Research Engineer
(Affiliate)

Research Engineer.

James Meiss
Professor of Applied Mathematics
(Founding Principal Investigator)

Professor Meiss is an applied mathematician and theoretical physicist specializing in dynamical systems theory (Hamiltonian dynamics, the transition to chaos and the theory of transport).  After receiving a PhD in 1980 in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley, he was a research scientist at the Institute for Fusion Studies…

Harry Mynick
Principal Research Physicist
(Affiliate)

Harry Mynick is a Principal Research Physicist (emeritus) in the PPPL Theory Department. He has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1996. His principal areas of expertise are in plasma transport, particularly in 3-dimensional toroidal systems, energetic particle dynamics, and canonical mechanics, and has been a pioneer in the…

Shibabrat Naik
Research Fellow
(Postdoctoral Scholar)

Dynamical systems theory: Geometric and statistical methods of chaotic dynamics, Discovery of structures in phase space transport, Partial control of escape and transition dynamics, Phase space structures based control.

Data-driven methods: Transport barriers in atmosphere and ocean, Machine learning phase space structures, Reduced…

Michael O’Neil
Associate Professor of Mathematics
(Co-Investigator)

Mike O’Neil is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute at NYU. The main areas of his research include analysis-based fast algorithms, scientific computing, computational PDE and integral equations, and numerical analysis. Recently, O’Neil has been focused on constructing solvers for various problems in computational…

Elizabeth Paul
Assistant Professor
(Affiliate)

Dr. Elizabeth Paul uses theoretical and computational methods to study the magnetic confinement of plasmas for fusion energy sciences. Controlled fusion holds promise of providing a carbon-neutral, safe, and sustainable energy source. Her work focuses on the advancement of the stellarator magnetic confinement concept, a complex toroidal…

David Pfefferlé
Lecturer
(Affiliate)

David Pfefferlé's research revolves around the application of differential geometry to plasma physics problems with focus on magneto-hydrodynamics, field-line topology, guiding-centre theory and structure-preserving numerical methods. David Pfefferlé is a Lecturer in mathematics at the 

Alkesh R Punjabi
Professor and Director of Center for Fusion Research
(Affiliate)
Zhisong Qu
Postdoctoral Fellow
(Affiliate)
Allan Reiman
Principal Research Physicist
(Affiliate)

Allan Reiman is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and a Lecturer with Rank of Professor at Princeton University. He was the head of the Plasma Configuration Design Group for the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) from 1997 to 2000.  He was Interim Head of the PPPL Theory Department…

Gareth Roberg-Clark
Post Doctoral Fellow
(Affiliate)
Eduardo Rodriguez
Postdoctoral Scholar
(Affiliate)