As a member of the Radiation Surface Science and Engineering Lab (RSSEL), I contributed to a number of projects which address the power and particle exhaust challenges of fusion reactors. My dissertation work was based on a collaborative project with scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility to model divertor leakage of tungsten under a variety of boundary plasma conditions. I also contributed to the design, procurement, assembly, and commissioning of a new million-dollar surface science facility at Penn State, which the RSSEL group will use to develop advanced materials technologies for plasma-facing components in fusion reactors. I managed six undergraduate students who contributed to multiple research projects within RSSEL.

My work at the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions was oriented around research on the HIDRA stellarator. In the lab I wore a variety of hats, from vacuum technician and machine operator to diagnostic developer and plasma modeler. I also contributed significantly to plasma engineering curriculum development within the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering.

As a Fulbright Grantee, my work at ITER was a continuation of my research in tokamak disruption prediction.

My volunteer work with the Forum on Physics and Society involved identifying and using different forms of social media to extend the audience of the Forum's quarterly newsletter, and included some editorial work in preparing the newsletter itself.

My work at PPPL with the Computational Plasma Physics Group consisted of using Support Vector Machines for predicting disruptions in JET plasmas. I looked at how the incorporation of spatially dependent diagnostic signals (e.g. radial temperature profiles) can improve prediction capability over the use of 0-d time trace signals, and looked into the use of dimensionless input features as a way to develop a machine-portable predictor.

My first work at PPPL with the Computational Plasma Physics Group included implementation and verification of new Fortran routines for particle loading in the neoclassical PIC code GTC-NEO, and performance optimization of the code using OpenMP. Running on the local cluster, my physics studies included verification of bootstrap current models and validation of anomalous ion thermal transport trends for NSTX H-mode plasmas.

My work at the NIST Center for Neutron Research as a member of the Chemical Sciences Division, Material Measurement Laboratory included analysis of various materials using the Neutron Depth Profiling technique, development of deconvolution software for NDP spectral data, using Monte Carlo methods for modeling NDP spectra, and further development of the NDP technique for the examination of liquid samples.