Eric Meier Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Wa, Us

Greater Seattle Area

Zap Energy’s technology stabilizes plasma using sheared flows rather than magnetic fields. Driving electric current through the flow creates the magnetic field, which confines and compresses the plasma. The higher the current, the greater the pressure and density in the plasma.The US Department of Energy has funded our team since 1998. In 2015, we were awarded a grant from ARPA-E’s ALPHA program and exceeded all of their aggressive program milestones. This led to a $6.8 million ARPA-E OPEN award, and further backing from an energy-focused investor base.

Greater Seattle Area

Developed electron-ion-neutral models in the WARPXM modeling framework.

Seattle, Wa

Taught a course on Plasma Material Interaction in Fall 2016 for the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which addressed fundamental PMI physics, and applications in both fusion energy and aerospace. Collaborated with Aeronautics and Astronautics students in connection with PMI-related modeling.

Seattle, Wa

As a sole proprietor, doing business as Piton Research, I do computational physics consulting work. Recently completed a contract with UW, under an AFOSR grant, for modeling the long timescale, multi-pulse behavior of an FRC-based thruster in a realistic ground test vacuum tank geometry.

Seattle, Wa And San Diego, Ca

Modeled plasma, neutral, and impurity behavior in the tokamak scrape-off layer and divertor. One thrust of my work was to understand the power exhaust layer surrounding the toroidal plasma. Another was to conduct modeling in support of so-called "divertor" technologies under development at the DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics for managing said power exhaust. Used SOLPS-ITER, the scrape-off layer modeling tool that has been chosen as the main tool for the international ITER tokamak.

Princeton, Nj

As an LLNL postdoc, I was assigned to do research at PPPL in Princeton, NJ. Modeled edge plasma in magnetic confinement fusion experiments using the Livermore-developed UEDGE code. Studied the so-called “snowflake” divertor technique for mitigating the damaging effects of the exhaust on plasma-facing components.

Forks, Wa

Pursued the Ansari X Prize, a $10M prize for the first privately funded effort to launch a person to space twice in two weeks with a 90% reusable vehicle. Developed solid propellant rocket motors with the goal of low-cost, reliable propulsion for sounding rockets, the X Prize vehicle, and a small-payload launch vehicle. Designed and constructed numerous test rockets and prototype X Prize rockets, including propulsion, attitude control, and navigation systems. In addition to technical duties, managed the marketing effort, media outreach, and investor relations for the company.

Supported production of small hydrazine monopropellant rocket engines that are used for attitude control on launch vehicles such as the Boeing Delta IV vehicle and the Lockheed Martin Atlas V. Contributed to development of a hall thruster propulsion system for the Air Force.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Phd), Computational Plasma Physics

Thesis title: Modeling Plasmas with Strong Anisotropy, Neutral Fluid Effects, and Open Boundary Conditions

Ms, Computational Plasma Physics

Thesis title: Developing and Benchmarking MH4D, a Tetrahedral Mesh MHD Code

Bs, Mechanical Engineering

Senior design project: Design and construction an offroad vehicle for the SAE Mini Baja Competition.