Research Interests

• Magnetohydrodynamics, particle orbit dynamics, and general plasma physics
• Finite difference/volume/element, particle-in-cell, and other numerical methods
• Electric propulsion, particularly self-field and applied-field MPDTs
• Magnetic confinement fusion energy
• Applied dynamical systems theory

Academic History

I grew up in Seattle, WA and enrolled at the University of Washington in 2000. The following summer I became a research assistant on the ZaP Flow Z-Pinch experiment, an innovative confinement concept for plasma physics research. Over the next three years this work became the foundation for further studies in applied plasma physics. After graduating in 2004 with a B.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, I began graduate studies at Princeton University in the Electric Propulsion & Plasma Dynamics Lab. For the next two years I studied finite volume methods for numerical simulation of propulsive plasmas, receiving a Masters degree in Fall of 2006. I then joined the MAE department Applied Dynamical Systems Lab and worked on theoretical and numerical analysis of instability induced current redistribution in a spherical torus. Over the summer of 2007 I completed a practicum at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as part of the Department of Energy Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship. I spent the fall semester of 2009 on leave from Princeton, working with the Plasma Science Initiative Center at the University of Washington, on boundary conditions for the spectral element code HiFi. Upon returning to Princeton I resumed work on numerical simulation of electric propulsion plasmas, entering into a collaboration with the UW PSI Center, in which we are expanding the capabilities of the HiFi code to study MPDT propulsive plasmas and using it to investigate the Princeton Lithium Lorentz-Force Accelerator.