2020-04-05 U-M engineers are developing efficient, effective, and scalable ways to disinfect N95 masks, which are typically discarded after one use. Professors Herek Clack and Mirko Gamba are part of the team working on testing the masks after treatment.
2020-03-31 Prof. Justin Kasper leads a new $62.6 million NASA mission, which aims to provide better information on how the sun’s radiation affects the space environment that our spacecraft and astronauts travel through. The Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, or SunRISE, consists of miniature satellites that form a “virtual telescope” in space to detect and study the radio waves that precede major solar events. SunRISE, expected to launch in 2023, will offer a never-before-seen glimpse at what goes on in the solar corona.
2020-02-04 John Nees, Associate Research Scientist, has received the Kenneth M. Reese Outstanding Research Scientist Award from the College of Engineering. This award honors research scientists who have “demonstrated sustained excellence in research and related scholarly activities.” Nees is honored for his excellence in research and scholarship, as well as his distinguished career as a key member of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science.
2020-01-23 Prof. Mark Moldwin will receive the 2019-2020 Trudy Huebner Service Excellence Award. This award is given to faculty who have “…demonstrated significant service contribution at the College and/or University levels.”
2020-01-23 Prof. R. Paul Drake will receive the 2019-2020 H. Scott Fogler Award for Professional Leadership and Service. This award is given to faculty who demonstrate “…significant national or international impact on the field of engineering through leadership or service external to the College of Engineering.”
2019-09-01 Yao Kovach (NERS) won a U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program award for her proposal titled “Understanding nanoparticle emission from 1 atm DC glow discharge with liquid anode.” In Winter 2020, Yao will work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to complete her thesis research.
2019-09-18 The United States is upgrading its laser capabilities with ZEUS, a new 3-petawatt system to be built at the University of Michigan.
2019-09-16 Prof. Carolyn Kuranz has been elected a 2019 Fellow of the American Physical Society “For spearheading academic use of the National Ignition Facility for seminal experiments in plasma laboratory astrophysics, specifically the effects of locally generated intense radiation on an interface and on astrophysically relevant interfacial instabilities.”
2019-08-15 The Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society has selected Prof. Foster as a Distinguished Lecturer for 2019-2020. This Program, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is intended to share with the larger scientific community the exciting recent advances in plasma physics. The title of Prof. Foster's talk is “Lightning in a canteen: The promise of plasma-treated refreshment for survival.”
2019-08-01 Dr. Matthew Gomez of Sandia National Lab, a MIPSE alum and a recent seminar speaker, received a PECASE award “for exceptional leadership and contributions to innovative research in high-energy density physics and leadership of the magnetically amplified inertial fusion effort; and for his formidable commitment and exemplary role modeling to develop a community of scientists and engineers.”
2019-08-03 Prof. Ryan McBride received the DOE Office of Science Early Career Award for his project titled "The Physics of Micro-Pinches."
2019-07-30 MIPSE was pleased to co-sponsor the First Community Workshop for High Energy Density Physics. This workshop, co-chaired by Prof. Carolyn Kuranz, is part of the Community Planning Process (CPP) conducted by the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics.
2019-06-12 Prof. Carolyn Kuranz accepted the position of an Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.
2019-04-26 Prof. August Evrard was honored with the 11th annual Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize for his project, Problem Roulette: A Stress-free Practice Zone for Student Learning.
2019-02-27 Prof. Justin Kasper testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and discussed how best to protect the power grid from space weather.
2019-02-13 Brandon Russell (ECE) was awarded the Rackham International Student Fellowship for his research on magnetic fields in high-energy plasmas, which could help advance the development of clean energy and our understanding of energetic astrophysical phenomena.
2019-02-07 Prof. Alec Gallimore, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering, has been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering for advanced spacecraft electric propulsion, especially Hall thruster technology.
2018-12-03
The US National Academies has recently started the Decadal Assessment of Plasma Science - Plasma 2020. The Plasma 2020 committee invites the US and international plasma science and technology communities to submit white papers addressing past accomplishments, future science challenges, opportunities to provide societal benefit, needed interdisciplinary collaborations and means to enhance careers in the fields of plasma science and technology. Please submit white papers by March 8, 2019.
2018-11-14 Women in MIPSE luncheons were recently inaugurated to bring U-M women students and post-doctoral fellows in plasmas fields together, providing a community to share experiences, insights, and resources to support each other. The first lunch, held November 14, 2018, was organized by Janis Lai (NERS). The honorary guest, Dr. Svetlana Starikovskaia of Laboratory of Plasma Physics, CNRS, France, shared her research and teaching experiences with six Women in MIPSE members.
2018-11-07 U-M will receive $1 million through the LaserNetUS initiative for providing time on the HERCULES laser, the reigning world champion for laser intensity at 20 sextillion (2x1022) watts per centimeter squared.
2018-10-31 Amanda Lietz (NERS) is a winner of Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Research
2018-09-21 The Michigan Advanced In-Space propulsion Engineering (MAISE) team conducted their first electric propulsion demostration as part of the Technology Takeover on Ingalls Mall.
2018-09-22 Prof. Alec Thomas has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society "for contributions to the experimental and theoretical understanding of short pulse high intensity laser plasma interactions and in particular for the development of laser wakefield accelerators and the generation of x-rays from these beams."
2018-07-04 Plasma is the ‘hidden champion’ of industrial innovation – Prof. Christian Oehr
2018-04-26 Prof. Volker Sick was presented with the 2018 President’s Award for Distinguished Service in International Education. The purpose of this award is to recognize and celebrate the extraordinary efforts of faculty and staff who keep U-M on the leading edge of international education for the students.
2018-04-25 Seven graduate students have been named MIPSE Fellows 2018-2019: Austin Brenner and Zachariah Brown (Aerospace Engineering, U-M); Kenneth Chung (Civil Engineering, U-M); Forrest Glines (Astronomy/Computer Science and Engineering, MSU); Amina Hussein (Applied Physics, U-M); Agnit Mukhopadhyay and Yeimy Rivera (Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, U-M).
2018-04-17 Stephanie Miller (NERS) has been selected to receive the Laboratory Residency Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration. For her LRGF research, Stephanie will spend two 12-week residencies at Sandia National Labs, working with the pulsed-power sciences and inertial confinement fusion (ICF) groups. She will be working to transfer the technology and diagnostic techniques that she is developing here at U-M to the 30-MA Z facility at Sandia.
2018-04-13 Yao E. Kovach (NERS) is a winner of Eye on Research, a graduate student photo contest aimed at capturing the excitement, range, color and creativity of research. In her plasma picture, the self-organization pattern shows a perfectly symmetrical spoke structure with center convergence on the anode surface of sodium chloride solution at 80mA. Above the plasma spokes, a golden yellow colored prominent halo that surrounds the white colored main plasma column along with 8 millimeter gap in the air. Below the plasma spokes, the image shows a salt water reflection of the halo with helium plasma emitted from the 500 micrometer center of a hollow shaped cathode. From the spectroscopic analysis, we determined the golden yellow colored of the halo is due to the sodium glow from the vapor of the liquid. These blue colored plasma spokes have a size of around 25 micrometer and 85 micrometer in width and length respectively.
2018-03-06 Prof. Louise Willingale received an NSF CAREER award for her research project “Relativistic Electron Driven Magnetic Reconnection." Read more about Louise's research in the EECS News.
2018-02-21 The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has announced awards of $16 million through its 2018 Young Investigator Program (YIP). The awards were made to young scientists whose research holds strong promise across a wide range of naval-relevant science and technology areas. Prof. Ryan McBride's winning project title is "High-Power Microwave Generation by Compact Linear Transformer Driver Technology."
