Columbia Students and Scientists Shine at Annual Meeting of Plasma Physics

Last week, Columbia University students, scientists, and faculty attended the 65th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, the world's largest meeting devoted to the latest results in plasma physics and fusion science. Columbians authored or co-authored over 125 presentations, co-hosted a town-hall meeting, and participated in mini-conference discussing the stellarator path to fusion energy involving public and private efforts.

Major highlights of the meeting were reports of the latest results from the DIII-D National Research Facility describing the physics and beneficial fusion-performance of so-called "negative triangularity" shaping for magnetic fusion. Applied Physics undergraduate, Sophia Guizzo (Class 2025) received accolades for her presentation "Modeling the vertical stability of negative triangularity reactors,” which received a best undergraduate poster award. Doctoral student, William Boyes, was invited to present his doctoral work "Scenario Development and MHD Stability of Negative Triangularity Plasmas in DIII-D,” and Dr. Andrew Oak Nelson presented his invited lecture titled "Robust avoidance of edge localized modes alongside pedestal formation in negative triangularity plasmas.”

In addition to these presentations, Columbia University participation included six undergraduates, fourteen research scientists and post-doctoral scientists, and six presentations from Applied Physics faculty. Undergraduate research projects were presented by Ashton Binks, Eliot Felske, Sebastian Gomez, Priyansh Lunia, and Lucia Rondini. Additional graduate student presentations were given by David Arnold, Anson Braun, Daniel Burgess, Amelia Chambliss, Rian Chandra, Hari Choudhury, Nigel DaSilva, Todd Elder, Mohammed Haque, Abdullah Hyder, Boting Li, Matthew Notis, Matthew Pharr, Jacob Rabinowitz, Juan Riquezes, Melanie Russo, Matthew Tobin, Yumou Wei, Haley Wilson, and Jamie Xia. First-year graduate students Jacob Halpern and Alexandra Lachmann and undergraduate Arian Timm (University of Minnesota) presented their research conducted as part of the Plasma and Fusion Undergraduate Research Opportunities (PFURO) program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. Presentations from Columbia University research scientists and post-doctoral scientists were given by Antoine Baillod, Alexander Battey, Guillermo Bustos-Ramirez, Christopher Hansen, Jeremy Hanson, Alexey Knyazev, Nils Leuthold, Jeffrey Levesque, Nikolas Logan, Steven Sabbagh, Ian Stewart, Veronika Zamkovska, Garima Joshi (Columbia Astronomy), and Luca Comisso (Columbia Astronomy). Finally, five faculty specialists in plasma physics also presented research results and overview: Allen Boozer, Michael Mauel, Gerald Navratil, Elizabeth Paul, and Carlos Paz-Soldan.