David Schaffner Email and Phone Number

I am an experimental plasma physicist focused on issues relating to turbulence both in confinement plasmas as well as astrophysical plasmas. I am a professor at Bryn Mawr College, a women's college outside of Philadelphia, PA.I received my bachelors degree in physics (minor mathematics) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2006, and my master's and PhD degrees in physics, also from UCLA in 2007 and 2013, respectively, with Troy Carter as my doctoral advisor. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Department of Physics and Astronomy at Swarthmore College working under Michael Brown on SSX, I joined the faculty at Bryn Mawr college in 2015 to start an experimental plasma research lab there.My research interests include: Study of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in a laboratory plasma device. Analysis of fluctuations in magnetic field, fluid flows, density, and temperature of plasma is conducted using a wide variety of time-series and statistical techniques including spectral decomposition, Wavelets, probability distribution functions, temporal and spatial correlations, conditional averaging, and permutation entropy/statistical complexity. Goals include understanding the mechanisms involved in energy transfer and energy dissipation in MHD turbulence and making comparisons to simulations and satellite observations of heliospheric turbulence (such as that found in the solar wind and magnetosheath). Studies of turbulent suppression and transport mechanisms in edge plasma relevant to magnetic confinement fusion are carried out on the Large Plasma Device (LAPD), a joint NSF/DOE User Facility at the University of California, Los Angeles. I maintain a collaborative effort with Michael Brown at Swarthmore College on the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX). At Swarthmore, I am currently investigating possible new technologies for fusion plasma under a grant from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E).