William Boyes

Graduate Student

William joined the plasma physics PhD program in Fall 2019. His interests span fusion energy, tennis, surfing, beach volleyball, STEM outreach, and Latin. He is a bass-baritone chorister with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.

Advisor: Gerald Navratil
Research Focus: William's research includes ideal MHD stability analysis (DCON, GATO, a little MARS), tearing stability (PEST3, RDCON), integrated modeling with the FASTRAN code suite, reactor scenario access, and reactor (rho*) scaling. He is based at the the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, apprenticed by Dr. Francesca Turco. He led his thesis experiments to develop novel strongly shaped negative triangularity reactor scenarios on DIII-D and to investigate their stability to rotating m=2/n=1 tearing modes. Scenarios of interest include negative triangularity, high beta hybrid, high internal inductance and the ITER baseline (IBS). 

Select Publications: 

William Boyes et al., "MHD stability of negative triangularity DIII-D plasmas" 2023 Nucl. Fusion in press DOI 10.1088/1741-4326/acd564

F. Turco et al., "The physics basis to integrate an MHD stable, high-power hybrid scenario to a cool divertor for steady-state reactor operation" 2023 Nucl. Fusion 63 036020