I am a plasma physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), where I work on antimatter containment fields, as well as schemes for combining the antimatter with matter in new and interesting ways.

More precisely, I’m the group leader for the APEX-PAX-EPOS team.  We and our collaborators aim to create and study magnetically confined electron-positron pair plasmas in the laboratory. The most recent addition to the APEX Collaboration is the EPOS (Electrons and Positrons in an Optimized Stellarator) project, my Helmholtz Young Investigator Group.

Previously, I worked as a postdoc at Forschungs-Neutronenquelle Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (part of the Technische Universität München), funded via an international collaboration with the Surko Group (located at UCSD, about 9674 km away) and before that as a Helmholtz Postdoc at IPP. My graduate work was in Applied Physics at Caltech, as a member of the Bellan Plasma Group.

In my professional “spare time”, I enjoy lecturing, am proud to have jump-started the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics Student Days (during my years on the Committee for the COncerns of studeNts aNd Early Career scienTists), and try to fit in as much other outreach and education as I can.

I can be reached by e-mail at [my first name]@[domain name], should you have any questions or comments about my work, be interested in a copy of one of my talks or posters, or otherwise wish to contact me.

Thank you for stopping by!

Visiting Karlsruhe a few years back, I got to check out the TFMC = Toroidal Field Model Coil, whose purpose in life was to test design principles for some of the superconducting magnets for ITER (the big international fusion machine being built in France). These days, it is retired and sits out in the parking lot, adorned with plaques. And the occasional physicist. (More info here.)