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NCPST member moving to University of Tulsa

Dr Karl Sassenberg, Fusion Research Consultant at the NCPST is moving to a doctoral research position at the University of Tulsa.  He will be part of the theoretical/computational plasma physics group with Professor Dylan Brennan.

The research goal is to understand important physics effects in the onset and evolution of non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities in high beta (ratio of thermal to magnetic energy) magnetic confinement systems, in particular Resistive Wall Modes. This research will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the physics of the onset and evolution of resistive MHD instabilities observed in present day magnetic confinement experiments and upcoming burning plasma experiments as well as solar and astrophysical plasmas. The work will begin in a basic theoretical context and evolve to comparisons of computational results with experimental data, particularly from the experiments DIII-D at General Atoms (GA), San Diego, CA and NSTX at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ. The work is supported by the Department of Energy, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, and will be held in collaboration with scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, GA, and PPPL, as well as other participating institutions. The position also provides access to the High Power Computational resource at NERSC University California Berkley, CA, and a dedicated, state-of-the-art computational cluster at the University of Tulsa.