D
Committee Member Biographical Information
MARK J. KUSHNER, Co-Chair, is the Haddad Collegiate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan, and holds appointments in the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Science Department, Chemical Engineering Department, and Applied Physics Program. He is director of the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering and the Department of Energy (DOE) Center on Plasma Interactions with Complex Interfaces. Dr. Kushner received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1979. He served on the staffs at Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; 1980-1983) and as director of Electron, Atomic and Molecular Physics at Spectra Technology (1983-1986) before joining the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1986-2004), where he was the Founder Professor of Engineering and held several administrative roles. Prof. Kushner was dean of engineering and the Melsa Professor of Engineering at Iowa State University (2005-2008) before joining the University of Michigan. Dr. Kushner’s research interests are in low-temperature plasmas (LTPs), addressing the generation and transport of charged and chemically reactive species, their interactions with surfaces for materials modification, and the development of plasma-based devices. Dr. Kushner has served in several national and international leadership roles, including editor-in-chief of Plasma Sources Science and Technology, and served on several National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine studies, including the last plasma science decadal survey. Dr. Kushner has received numerous awards, including the American Physical Society (APS) Allis Prize, AVS Medard Welch Award, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
C. K. Birdsall Award, IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award, Semiconductor Industry Association University Research Award, and election to the National Academy of Engineering.
GARY ZANK, Co-Chair, is the director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR), a University of Alabama Board of Trustees Trustee Professor, and the Aerojet/Rocketdyne Chair in Space Science, an eminent scholar and distinguished professor, and chair of the Department of Space Science (SPA) at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Dr. Zank’s research interests extend across space physics, plasma astrophysics, and plasma physics. Although his research is related primarily to theory, modeling, and simulations, Dr. Zank is involved in numerous experimental and observational programs. Some areas of research include the interaction of the solar wind with the partially ionized interstellar medium. Dr. Zank received his Ph.D in applied mathematics from the University of Natal in South Africa in 1987. He has been recognized in his field through the receipt of numerous honors and awards throughout his career. In 2017, he was named the first University of Alabama Board of Trustees Trustee Professor, was elected in 2016 as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, was recognized internationally in 2015 with the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) Axford Medal, the highest honor given by the AOGS. Other awards include his being a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the APS, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2017, he was also elected an AOGS honorary member and was chosen by the International Space Science Institute to be the 2017 Johannes Geiss Fellow. Dr. Zank has served on a number of National Academies’ ad hoc and standing committees.
AMITAVA BHATTACHARJEE is a professor of astrophysical sciences and head of the Theory Department of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He also serves as co-director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics. He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University (1981) in theoretical plasma physics from the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He has taught previously at Columbia University (1984-1993) in the Department of Applied Physics, at the University of Iowa (1993-2003) in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the University of New Hampshire (2003-2012), where he served as the Paul Professor of Space Science. At the University of Iowa, he received the James Van Allen Natural Sciences Fellowship (1996), the Faculty Scholar Award (1997-2000), and the Michael J. Brody Award (2003). He has served as senior editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics, as chair of the Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) of the APS, and as founding chair of the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics of the APS, and on various prize and fellowship committees. He is a fellow of the APS, the AAAS, and the AGU. His research interests include magnetic reconnection, turbulence and singularity formation, kinetic theory, free-electron lasers, and complex (or dusty) plasmas.
PETER J. BRUGGEMAN is a professor and associate department head of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is also the director of the High Temperature and Plasma Laboratory and associate director of the DOE Center for Low Temperature Plasma Interactions with Complex Interfaces. His primary research interests are in LTPs including plasma diagnostics, plasma-liquid and materials interactions and nonequilibrium plasma kinetics and chemistry applied to plasma processes for environmental, biomedical and renewable energy technologies. Previously, Dr. Bruggeman was on the faculty of Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands) in the Department of Applied Physics. He is a recipient of several awards including the 2012 Hershkowitz Early Career Award, the 2013 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Medal and Prize in Plasma Physics, the 2016 DOE Early Career Award and the 2018 Peter Mark Memorial Award of the American Vacuum Society. He earned his Ph.D. in applied physics from Ghent University (Belgium). He serves as section editor for LTPs of the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics and as elected member of the board of directors of the International Plasma Chemistry Society.
TROY CARTER is a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received B.S. degrees in physics and nuclear engineering from North Carolina State University in 1995 and a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University in 2001. Prof. Carter is the director of the Basic Plasma Science Facility (BaPSF), a national user facility for plasma science supported by DOE and NSF. He is also the director of the Plasma Science and Technology Institute (PSTI), an organized research unit at UCLA. His research focuses on experimental studies of fundamental processes in magnetized plasmas and is motivated by current issues in magnetic confinement fusion energy research and in space and astrophysical plasmas including magnetic reconnection, turbulence and transport in magnetized plasmas, and the nonlinear physics of Alfvén waves. He was a co-recipient of the 2002 APS DPP Excellence in Plasma Physics Research Award and is a fellow of the APS. Prof. Carter has served on a number of advisory committees, including the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC), the Fachbeirat for the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, and program advisory committees for the DIII-D tokamak, the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics Frontier Center CMSO.
JOHN CARY is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and CEO of Tech-X Corporation. Dr. Cary’s research focuses on the discovery of new methods for accelerating charged particles, heating and transport of magnetically confined plasma, dense plasma focus, and advanced computation on new computer architectures. His research interests are concentrated in beam/accelerator physics, plasma physics, nonlinear dynamics, and computational physics. Dr. Cary’s
accelerator/beam physics interests are currently in advanced accelerator concepts: the generation and use of large (10-100 GV/m) fields through laser-plasma interaction. His plasma physics interests are currently in the simulation of the nonlinear interactions of radio frequency electromagnetic fields with plasma as occurring in plasma heating. In recent years, he has devoted extensive effort to computational methods, including algorithm development. He is the originator of the arbitrary-dimensional, parallel, hybrid, plasma simulation code, VORPAL. Dr. Cary received a Ph.D. and M.S. in physics at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkely), in 1979 and 1975, respectively, and bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics at the University of California, Irvine, in 1973. He is a senior member of IEEE and a fellow of the APS DPP, which he chaired 2017-2018. He is a recipient of many awards, such as the IEEE NPSS Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award. His other service includes being an associate editor of the Reviews of Modern Physics and other journals and being on the organizing and program committees for the annual meeting of the APS DPP, the Particle Accelerator Conferences, and other national and international conferences in plasma and beam science.
CHRISTINE A. COVERDALE is a plasma physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Coverdale joined Sandia in 1997 and in 2011 was named a distinguished member of the technical staff. She has been involved in a broad range of experiments at the Saturn and Z pulsed power facilities centered around nuclear weapons certification and other national security projects. She also works on radiation detection systems and diagnostics to assess warm and hard X rays from Z-pinch plasmas. Dr. Coverdale has a doctorate in plasma physics from the University of California, Davis, and has authored or co-authored more than 120 papers, and regularly presents at conferences. She served three terms on the executive committee of the IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Committee and has served as the technical program chair or co-chair for the IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2021. She also served a 4-year term on the IEEE Nuclear Plasma Sciences Society administrative committee. Dr. Coverdale was on the Executive Committee of the APS Division of Plasma Physics and served for several years as the senior editor for High Energy Density Physics for IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. She has served on multiple awards committees for IEEE NPSS and APS DPP, including fellowship committees and is a fellow of both the IEEE and APS.
ARATI DASGUPTA is a senior research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Dr. Dasgupta received her B.S. in physics with honors, M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland before joining the NRL in 1986. She is a section head leading basic and applied research programs in atomic processes in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas that span pulsed power radiation sources, inertial confine-
ment fusion (ICF), laser-matter interaction, plasma spectroscopy, LTP processing, and ultra-short wavelength lasers. Presently her research focus is on nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium kinetics modeling and simulation of HEDP experiments of multi-keV plasma radiation sources on Sandia’s Z machine and National Ignition Facility (NIF) at LLNL, ICF using symmetry capsule (Symcap) implosion on NIF, magnetized plasma on Jupiter Laser Facility at LLNL, and radiation physics for high ZA elements on the NRL NIKE laser in support of ICF. She is a fellow of the APS and the Washington Academy of Sciences. She is a member of several science panels, served on DOE’s FESAC, and was part of a committee writing OFES/DOE’s Strategic Planning report in 2014 and DOE’s ReNeW report on HEDLP in 2009. Currently she is a member of the APS Committee of Status of Women in Physics and chair of its awards subcommittee. She is also a member of the advisory committee of IEEE’s Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. She has served on several APS committees, including fellowship committees of DAMOP and DPP, and chaired Women in Plasma Physics Committee of the DPP. She is the author (on invitation) of a chapter in a book titled Blazing the Trail; Essays by Leading Women in Science and presented a public lecture at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, in their yearly public lecture series featuring prominent women in physics, astronomy, and engineering.
DANIEL DUBIN is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. His principal area of research is theoretical plasma physics, focused mainly on non-neutral plasmas (pure electron plasmas, pure ion plasmas, positron plasmas, etc.) This work has also led to research in the physics of dusty plasmas, strongly coupled plasmas, two-dimensional fluid dynamics, and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. Dr. Dubin received his Ph.D. in plasma physics from Princeton University in 1984. He was elected a fellow of the APS DPP in 1994, and in 2000 he received the APS John Dawson Award.
CAMERON G.R. GEDDES is a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and deputy director of the laboratory’s BELLA center focusing on study of laser driven plasma waves and their applications compact particle accelerators and photon sources. He leads the center’s experimental efforts creating new accelerator techniques to extend the future reach of high-energy physics, for novel radiation sources in the X-ray to THz bands, for high-energy-density physics and for applications across medical, industrial and security spaces. He also leads a project developing plasma based accelerators as compact sources of near-monochromatic MeV photons for nuclear material detection and characterization. Previous positions have spanned a range of plasma physics, including Thomson scattering measurement of driven waves in inertial confinement fusion laser-plasma interaction at LLNL, wave mixing in Omega laser experiments
via Polymath Reseach, and small aspect Tokamak equilibria at the University of Wisconsin. He received the Ph.D. in 2005 at UC Berkeley, supported by the Hertz Fellowship, where he received the Hertz and APS Rosenbluth dissertation awards for demonstration of a laser driven, plasma based electron accelerator producing mono-energetic beams. He received the B.A. degree from Swarthmore College in 1997, and received the APS Apker Award and Swarthmore Elmore Prize for work on Spheromak plasma magnetic equilibria. He is a fellow of the APS DPP and a recipient of the society’s Dawson award and of two LBNL Outstanding Performance awards. Previous community planning exercises have include Frontiers of Plasma Science (2015), Snowmass (2013), and the HEDLP ReNeW panel (2009).
S. GAIL GLENDINNING is a technical staff member at LLNL, where her research currently includes designing experiments for the National Ignition Facility on radiation transport and hydrodynamic instabilities. She received her B.A. in experimental physics from Middlebury College in 1973 and her Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics from Duke University in 1980. Following post-doctoral work at Duke, she worked for the nuclear fuels division of General Electric in Wilmington, North Carolina, and San Jose, California, designing monitoring systems for low-level radioactive waste. She joined LLNL in the Inertial Confinement Fusion program in 1985. Her work on ICF focused on the study of hydrodynamic instabilities in planar systems using both direct and hohlraum drive. She is a recipient of the Excellence in Plasma Physics award (1995) for her work on hydrodynamic instabilities and has been a fellow of the APS DPP since 1998. She served for 6 years on the National Academies plasma science committee, and for 3 years on the APS DPP executive committee.
DAN M. GOEBEL is a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) fellow and senior research scientist, an adjunct professor of electrical engineering and aerospace engineering at UCLA and an adjunct professor of electrical engineering at University of Southern California. At NASA/JPL he is responsible for the development of advanced electric propulsion systems and spacecraft technologies, and is the chief engineer of the NASA Psyche Mission that will launch in 2022. Previously he was a research scientist at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California, and principal scientist at Hughes/Boeing EDD in Torrance, California, where he was the supervisor of the Advanced Technology Group for microwave tube development and the lead scientist of the XIPS ion thruster program for commercial satellite station keeping. He received a NASA Engineering Achievement Medal in 2011, the IEEE John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics in 2014, the UCLA Engineering Alumni Professional Achievement Award in 2016, and the NASA Space Technology Award in 2015 and 2018. He earned his Ph.D. in applied plasma physics from UCLA. Dr. Goebel is a member of the National
Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, fellow of the IEEE, and a fellow of the APS. He is the author of over 135 technical journal papers, 150 conference papers, one book entitled Fundamentals of Electric Propulsion: Ion and Hall Thrusters, and holds 53 patents.
DAVID B. GRAVES is a professor of chemical engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. At UC Berkeley, Dr. Graves has been a leading figure in research associated with semiconductor manufacturing applications of LTP. His research interests include plasma modeling and simulations, plasma-surface interactions dusty plasmas, and novel applications of plasma in biology, agriculture and medicine. He is a fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) and the Institute of Physics and was the recipient of the Electrochemical Society Young Author Award, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Tegal Plasma Thinker Award, and the Plasma Prize of the Plasma Science and Technology Division of the AVS. He was named the Lam Research Distinguished Chair in Semiconductor Processing at UC Berkeley for 2011-2016. He received the Allis Prize for the Study of Ionized Gases from the APS in 2014 and the 2017 International Symposium of Dry Processes Nishizawa Award. He earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He acted as co-editor for the Report on Data Needs for Plasma Processing (1995-1996). He was co-editor of Low Temperature Plasma Science Challenges for the Next Decade (2008). He is currently senior editor of IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Science.
JUDITH KARPEN is a research astrophysicist in the Space Weather Laboratory, Heliophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the chief of the Space Weather Laboratory. Her primary research interests include analytical and numerical modeling of dynamic solar and heliospheric phenomena, and applications of plasma physics and magnetohydrodynamics to solar/heliospheric activity and space weather. Her current research is focused on solar prominences, coronal mass ejections/eruptive flares, coronal/heliospheric jets, and magnetic reconnection. Previously, Dr. Karpen was a research physicist in the Solar-Terrestrial Relationships Branch, Space Science Division, NRL. She has served on numerous committees for the American Astronomical Society and the AGU and on several advisory panels and committees for NASA and the National Academies, including the Committee on Solar and Space Physics (1997-2000) and the Solar-Heliospheric Panel of the Solar and Space Physics Decadal Survey (2001-2002). She earned her Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1980 and a B.S. in physics from the University of Michigan in 1974.
MAXIM Y. LYUTIKOV is a professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University. His research interests include high-energy astrophysics, compact objects, extragalactic astrophysics, cosmic rays, and plasma astrophysics. He earned his M.S. in theoretical physics from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and his Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics from California Institute of Technology in 1998. He has been awarded as a Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics and received the CITA National Fellowship, the Allan T. Moffett Fellowship, and the Van Maanen Fellowship throughout his career.
JOHN S. SARFF is a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research interests are fusion energy and basic plasma physics related to toroidal magnetically confined plasmas. He served as the director of the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST), which is one of the world’s largest reversed-field pinch (RFP) experiments. The MST facility is used for fusion research on the RFP and tokamak magnetic configurations as well as exploration of self-organizing plasma dynamics and their connections to astrophysical plasmas through processes such as magnetic reconnection, particle heating and energization, and turbulence and transport. Professor Sarff has served on numerous committees and panels for the APS DPP and DOE FESAC. He has also served on the advisory committees for the United States’s major user facilities for magnetic fusion research. He is the current president of the University Fusion Association, and he is one of the co-chairs for the APS DPP Community Planning Process. Professor Sarff earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a fellow of the APS.
ADAM B. SEFKOW is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the University of Rochester, with a secondary appointment as a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Laser Energetics. He earned his B.A. in physics with honors from Northwestern University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in plasma physics from Princeton University. Before joining the University of Rochester in 2016, he was a principal member of the technical staff in the Pulsed Power Sciences Center at Sandia National Laboratories. His primary research interest is to improve predictive capability in computational plasma physics. Prof. Sefkow has made scientific contributions to magneto-inertial fusion, direct- and indirect-drive ICF, short-pulse and long-pulse laser-plasma interaction physics, and intense charged-particle beam transport. He currently leads the development effort of a particle-based hybrid fluid-kinetic multiphysics simulation code. He has authored or co-authored about 100 papers and has served as a reviewer and committee member for numerous journals, agencies, and conferences. Prof. Sefkow received the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program Award, the Fusion Power Associates 2017 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award, and the National Nuclear Security Administration Defense
Programs Award of Excellence, in recognition of his scientific contributions on a range of topics.
EDWARD THOMAS, JR., is the Charles W. Barkley Endowed Professor of Physics and the associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Sciences and Mathematics at Auburn University. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Florida Institute of Technology, a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. from Auburn University. Prof. Thomas began his research career studying edge particle transport in fusion plasmas. Over the years, his work has become centered in basic plasma physics where his group conducts experimental plasma physics research on dusty (complex) plasmas, magnetized plasmas and plasma diagnostic development—with an emphasis on the particle, wave, and energy transport in LTPs. Most recently, he has led the development of the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment (MDPX) device. Previously, Prof. Thomas was a faculty member at Fisk University in the Department of Physics. He is an elected member of the International Union of Radio Science, Commission H, and is a fellow of the APS and the National Society of Black Physicists. He has served as a member of numerous advisory committees for the APS, NSF, DOE, National Academies, European Space Agency, and several research centers in the United States, Europe, and India—including the National Academies Plasma Science Committee and DOE FESAC.
