Columbia Climate Week: Accelerating Commercial Fusion

Dean Shih-Fu Chang, Columbia Engineering - Opening Remarks

Shih-Fu Chang is Dean and Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor at Columbia Engineering, where he leads the education, research, and innovation mission of the School.

As one of the most influential experts in artificial intelligence, multimedia, and computer vision, his research has led to AI tools for innovative image/video search tools used by major media companies and law enforcement agencies.

Dean Chang is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, and Academia Sinica. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Amsterdam and the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates. He is the inaugural director for Columbia Center of AI Technology in collaboration with Amazon

Prof. Carlos Paz-Soldan, Columbia Engineering - Host

Carlos Paz-Soldan’s research interests are motivated by the desire to solve the scientific and technological challenges standing in the way of harnessing controlled fusion energy on earth. His work focuses on controlling the transient off-normal events that can prevent the reliable operation of magnetic fusion device concepts. He is interested in advancing the physical basis of plasma instability phenomena as well as developing the fusion technologies necessary to deploy feasible actuators to achieve control. Prof. Paz-Soldan’s group conducts both experimental and computational work to support these goals.

He joined the Columbia Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics Department in 2021. Prior he was a staff scientist in the Magnetic Fusion Energy Division at General Atomics, where he advanced the research program of the DIII-D National Fusion Facility as well as other experiments worldwide.  Prof. Paz-Soldan has contributed to a broad range of problems in tokamak operation, stability, and control. These include: understanding the interaction of tokamak plasmas with non-axisymmetric fields used to control core and edge instabilities; the measurement and control of relativistic electron populations; and the conceptualization and design of novel actuators for transient control. He earned his B.Sc.E. from Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada in 2007 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2012. Prof. Paz-Soldan is the recipient of the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Prize in 2013 and the Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research in 2021, both from the American Physical Society.

Alexis Abramson, Dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and Incoming Dean of Columbia Climate School

Alexis Abramson is the 13th dean of the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, where she has been since mid-2019. At Dartmouth, she leads an expansion of the school, putting human- centered engineering at the heart of engineering education, research, and practice. Alexis’ research has focused broadly on thermal transport, from designing nanostructured materials to addressing building energy efficiency. Alexis also co-founded Edifice Analytics, a start-up that conducts virtual energy audits and manages building optimization. Prior to joining Dartmouth, she was the Maltz Professor of Energy Innovation at Case Western Reserve University and served as a director of the university’s Great Lakes Energy Institute. During the Obama administration, Abramson held the role of chief scientist and manager of the Emerging Technologies Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Program. In 2018, she also served as technical adviser for Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a $1 billion effort launched by Bill Gates to combat human-driven climate. She received her BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University and her PhD from University of California, Berkeley. She will be joining Columbia as Dean of the Climate School on January 1, 2025.

Charlie Baynes-Reid, CFO and General Counsel, Type One Energy Group Inc.

Charlie is General Counsel and CFO of Type One Energy, as well as a founding partner and General Counsel of NewHold Enterprises, having spent more than 20 years in private equity and principal investing both as a legal advisor and as an investor. Charlie has extensive experience working with companies in multiple sectors, with a focus on energy and infrastructure, diversified industrials, and financial services. Qualifying as a lawyer in the UK in 2001 with Simmons & Simmons, he worked in London, Tokyo, Sydney before moving to New York with Macquarie Capital in 2007. He subsequently became a founding partner and General Counsel of NewHold Enterprises in 2017. He joined Type One Energy as General Counsel in September, 2023 and became CFO in April 2024.  Charlie received his LLB Hons degree in Business Law from City University, London and is dual qualified as an English lawyer and a member of the New York Bar.

Cary Forest, Professor of Physics/UW Madison and Cofounder and CSO/Realta Fusion

Cary is a cofounder and CSO of Realta Fusion and also Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.   His early career focused on pioneering experiments in tokamak physics including building the first spherical tokamak in the US at Princeton Plasma laboratory followed by a position as senior scientist on the DIII-D device at General Atomics.  At the UW Madison, where he leads the plasma physics group as Director of the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory. In 2017, Cary lead a team that proposed to ARPA-E to revitalize the US mirror fusion program and take advantage of a number of game-changing technologies for the mirror concept, including high temperature superconducting magnets.  This experiment, the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror (WHAM) is a prototype for the Realta fusion concept going forward.

Michael Ginsberg, President, Tokamak Energy Inc.

Michael Ginsberg is President of Tokamak Energy USA, leading North American business and commercial partnership strategy. Michael is a renewable energy leader and author with 15+ years of experience developing green hydrogen plants and utility-scale solar + storage and microgrid projects worldwide. As VP of Technology at Avina Clean Hydrogen he led system integration and project execution for > 250 MW of green hydrogen plants. As VP of Energy Transition at national public consulting firm Bowman Consulting Group, he advised the CEO on decarbonization, ESG, and utility-scale renewable energy opportunities. Michael holds a Doctor of Engineering Science from the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science where he specialized in the techno-economics and scalability of polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzer systems. He also holds a MS in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and is a LEED AP, Certified Energy Manager, and NABCEP PV Installation Professional.  

Michael Segal, Senior Director of Open Innovation, Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Michael Segal is Senior Director of Open Innovation at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, where his team builds and leverages the broader technical ecosystem in support of commercial fusion. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering and has published across a broad range of technical Disciplines.

Sam Wurzel, Founder, Fusion Energy Base

Sam Wurzel is developing Fusion Energy Base, a website which provides information on organizations developing and supporting fusion energy. Previously, he was Technology-to- Market Advisor at ARPA-E and co-lead of the U.S. Department of Energy’s fusion crosscut team where he facilitated commercial spin outs of ARPA-E funded projects and contributed to the development of the DOE’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. Previously he was a co-founder and CEO of Octopart, the search engine for electronic components. Sam studied experimental plasma physics in graduate school at CU Boulder.