Zimmermann Receives EPS PhD Research Award
Dr. Benedikt Zimmermann, a postdoctoral researcher in the APAM Department at Columbia Engineering, has been awarded the Ph.D. Research Award of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS) for his doctoral work performed at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. This is the highest recognition for Ph.D. research in plasma physics in Europe. The award is given annually to young scientists whose research is recognized for its exceptional academic quality, international impact and contribution to the field.
Dr. Zimmermann completed his Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany, and joined Columbia Engineering in October 2024. His ongoing work in this field has resolved a long-standing discrepancy between theory and experiment regarding the transport of momentum in tokamak machines, which are good candidates for future fusion power plants. Based on this, he then developed the first predictive models for plasma rotation in toroidal tokamaks. Plasma rotation is a key quantity that interacts with a number of different effects in the plasma and can prevent certain magnetic instabilities that can lead to harmful disruptions of the plasma. His research not only deepens fundamental knowledge in plasma physics, but also enhances predictive capabilities for future fusion reactors, positioning his work as highly influential in the field.
Dr. Zimmermann will receive the award at the opening ceremony of the EPS Annual Plasma Physics Conference in July in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he has also been invited to give a plenary talk on his research, which has been published in Physics of Plasmas (31, 042306, 2024) under the title "Experimental validation of momentum transport theory in the core of H-mode plasmas in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak" (doi.org/10.1063/5.0203092).
