Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory



Tammy Ma, an experimental plasma physicist in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and high-energy-density (HED) physics at Lawrence Livermore, has been named a recipient of the prestigious Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Early Career Research Program. The program, now in its 9th year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work. Awardees are selected from a large pool of university and national laboratory-based applicants according to a peer review by outside scientific experts. Under the program, Ma will receive a total of $2.5 million in research funding over five years for her proposal, “Multi-ps short-pulse laser-driven particle acceleration for novel HED and ICF applications.” Ma currently serves as chair of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program’s Labwide committee and also as the X-Ray Analysis Group lead for the Laboratory’s ICF Program at the National Ignition Facility.

Lawrence Livermore magnetic fusion physicist Max Fenstermacher has been awarded the 2018 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research from the American Physical Society. He is cited jointly with Todd Evans of General Atomics and Richard Moyer of the University of California at San Diego for “the first experimental demonstration of the stabilization of edge localized modes in high-confinement diverted discharges, by application of very small edge-resonant magnetic perturbations, leading to the adoption of suppression coils in the ITER design.” ITER is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment. The Dawson Award recognizes a particular recent outstanding achievement in plasma physics research. The award consists of $5,000 to be divided equally in the case of multiple recipients, and includes a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient(s).

Lawrence Livermore retiree Bruce Cohen has been selected as the recipient of the 2018 Charles K. Birdsall Award from the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. He was cited for “contributions to the numerical simulation of plasmas, particularly multiple time-scale methods and to their application to diverse plasma physics problems, from laser–plasma interactions to tokamaks.” The Birdsall Award recognizes outstanding contributions in computational nuclear and plasma science, with preference given to areas within the broadest scope of plasma physics encompassing the interaction of charged particles and electromagnetic fields. Cohen’s achievement marks the fourth year this award has been presented and the second time a Lawrence Livermore researcher has won.