I specialize in advanced theoretical models of electromagnetic fields in extreme plasmas, such as quark-gluon plasma formed in particle colliders and electron-positron plasma in the early universe. Our research group's applications of plasma kinetic theory have yielded fairly simple analytic results competitive with supercomputer particle-in-cell simulations.I plan to apply what I have learned in plasma physics to advance the use of ultrafast lasers to ignite fusion in nanostructured targets.