Plasma Students Receive CSGF & NSF Awards
Amelia Chambliss and Jacob Halpern, have been awarded Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowships (DOE CSGF). Another incoming student, Rohan Lopez, has received an NSF graduate fellowship.
Prof. Elizabeth Paul said, “It is an honor for the Plasma Lab to have such an excellent group of incoming graduate students. Both the CSGF and NSF fellowships are extremely competitive, and we are looking forward to the research we will do together in the coming years.”
Amelia Chambliss is a rising second year PhD student working with Prof. Paul's group on the theory and numerical modeling of energetic ions in fusion plasmas. Because of her enthusiasm for fusion energy and poise as a young scientist, Amelia was chosen to speak at the White House Summit on “Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy” in 2022. Prof. Paul said, "It is evident that Amelia is already considered a young leader in fusion energy sciences, and I look forward to guiding her through her continued development as a computational scientist."
Rohan Lopez is an incoming first year PhD student from Pomona College. Prof. Paul said, "I met Rohan last summer while he was an intern at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where he was developing costing models for high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Rohan expressed enthusiasm for my research, and we began discussions on how his expertise could be used in my group to develop HTS technology for stellarator experiments. Rohan’s command of both theoretical and laboratory physics will be used for the design of a new on-campus stellarator experiment."
Jacob Halpern is an incoming first year PhD student from Purdue University. Jacob shows immense promise as a young researcher, with internship experience at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Naval Research Laboratory. He has received several national awards, including the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation Scholar, and has already published several journal articles. Jacob will be jointly supervised by Prof. Elizabeth Paul and Prof. Carlos Paz-Soldan. Prof. Paz-Soldan said, “I’m delighted to be able to work with Jacob. His clear enthusiasm and capability will be a tremendous asset to the Columbia Plasma Physics Lab and I look forward to welcoming him to the program.”