Eve Ostriker is a Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, where her research includes theory of star formation, the interstellar medium, and galactic evolution. She is particularly known for her work on turbulence in the star-forming interstellar medium, and for investigations quantifying the importance of various forms of star formation “feedback”. Prof. Ostriker earned her AB in Physics from Harvard College in 1987 and her PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. After postdoctoral research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, she joined the astronomy faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1996. In 2012 she moved to Princeton, where she is currently Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. Prof. Ostriker is a Simons Investigator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Frederico Fiuza is a Senior Staff Scientist and Theory Group Leader at the High Energy Density Science division at SLAC. He obtained his PhD in Plasma Physics from Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal, in 2012. From 2012 to 2015 he was a Lawrence Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, before joining SLAC. He is the recipient of the 2020 John Dawson Award and the 2018 Thomas H. Stix Award from the American Physical Society. His research combines kinetic simulations and high-energy-density experiments to explore a wide range of topics in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas, including particle acceleration, magnetic field amplification, collisionless shocks, magnetic reconnection, and nuclear fusion. Dr. Fiuza is currently Vice-Chair of GPAP.
Kristopher Klein is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Planetary Sciences and at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Prof. Klein studies basic processes in plasmas, with a focus on transport and dissipation in space and astrophysical systems. He received a BA in Physics and Mathematics from Luther College in 2008 and a PhD from the University of Iowa in 2013. From 2014 to 2016, he worked at the University of New Hampshire as an NSF Atmospheric and Geospace Science Postdoctoral Research Fellow studying the dissipation of plasma turbulence and preparing predictions for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission. In 2016, he joined the PSP SWEAP science team at the University of Michigan, and continues as a member of that team after starting his current position at the University of Arizona in Fall 2018. In 2019, he was awarded a NASA Early Career Investigator Grant for studying dissipation and instabilities in the inner heliosphere.
Libby Tolman is a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ.
Dr. Tolman uses a combination of analytical techniques and numerical tools to investigate a wide range of plasma physics problems in both nuclear fusion and astrophysics. She earned her AB in Physics from Princeton University in 2015 and her PhD in Physics from MIT in 2020, where she focused on plasma stability and particle transport in high-magnetic-field fusion devices. In 2020, she joined the School of Natural Sciences at the IAS. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Plasma Physics. Currently,
Dr. Tolman is building an analytical model for a plasma process occurring in the polar cap of pulsars that may be responsible for pulsar radio emission. She is also starting to explore magnetic reconnection in partially ionized astrophysical plasmas.
Lorenzo Sironi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University, where he works on a variety of plasma processes relevant to both space physics and astronomy. He became passionate about plasmas and astronomy in Pisa, before moving to the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton for his PhD, awarded in 2011. Since then, he has been a NASA Einstein Fellow at Harvard, and he moved to Columbia in 2016, where he has nurtured a thriving research group in high-energy plasma astrophysics. He was awarded a 2019 Sloan Fellowship in Physics and a 2020 Cottrell Scholar Award. His research group investigates the plasma physics of shocks, magnetic reconnection and turbulence in order to explain from first principles the observations of a wide variety of astrophysical sources, especially those whose extreme conditions cannot be currently probed in the laboratory.
Louise Willingale is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and a member of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Prof. Willingale researches experimental high-intensity laser-plasma interactions, with a focus on relativistic electron heating, ion acceleration, proton radiography, magnetic-field generation, and reconnection. From Imperial College London, she received a MSci in Physics in 2003 and a PhD in Plasma Physics in 2007. In 2008, she moved to the University of Michigan, first as a Postdoctoral Researcher, then as an Assistant Research Scientist, before becoming an Assistant Professor in 2014. In 2018, she received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF to study laser-driven magnetic reconnection and is a Co-PI for the NSF commissioned user laser facility ZEUS.
Matthew Kunz is an Associate Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University and at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and is Chair-Elect of GPAP. Prof. Kunz uses analytical and numerical tools to investigate magnetic fields and multi-scale plasma dynamics in a wide variety of astrophysical systems, including galaxy clusters, black-hole accretion flows, molecular clouds, protostellar cores, protoplanetary disks, and the solar wind. He received degrees in Astronomy-Physics and Music from the University of Virginia in 2003 and a PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. From 2009 to 2011, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oxford. Afterwards, he moved to Princeton as a NASA Einstein Fellow and Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellow, joining the faculty there in 2015. In 2017 he received a Sloan Fellowship in Physics and, in 2020, a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF.
Mike Brown is the Morris L. Clothier Professor of Physics at Swarthmore College and Chair-Elect of the APS Division of Plasma Physics. Prof. Brown has operated the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX) for 27 years to study fundamental MHD problems connected to astrophysics. These include laboratory experiments in magnetic reconnection, plasma turbulence, and self-organization. He earned his BA in Physics from Pomona College in 1981, and his PhD from Dartmouth in 1987. He was a senior research fellow at Caltech from 1987-1994 and has been at Swarthmore since 1994. Prof. Brown is a Fellow of the the APS and recipient of the APS Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution “for his outstanding contributions to plasma physics made possible by his development of a world-class spheromak laboratory at Swarthmore College, and for his energetic mentoring of undergraduate students.”
Nuno Loureiro is an Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is Chair of GPAP. He obtained his PhD in Plasma Physics from Imperial College London in 2005, followed by post-doctoral research positions at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, UK. From 2009 to 2015, he was a researcher at the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at IST Lisbon, Portugal, and joined the faculty of MIT in 2016. He received the 2015 Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research of the American Physical Society and, in 2017, a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF. His research expertise is in magnetic reconnection and turbulence in magnetized plasmas.