Dennis G. Whyte is the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering at MIT, a professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and former Director of the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. Whyte’s research interests focus on accelerating the development of magnetic fusion energy systems. He has led teams and published over 350 papers across the multi-disciplinary fields of magnetic fusion including plasma confinement, plasma-surface interactions, blanket technology, plasma diagnostics, superconducting magnets and ion beam surface analysis.
Whyte leads the overall MIT research team on SPARC, a private-sector funded compact high-field tokamak presently under development to demonstrate net fusion plasma energy gain. He also leads the Laboratory for Innovations in Fusion Technology at PSFC, which has energy company sponsorship to explore early-stage, disruptive fusion technologies. As an educator, Whyte has been deeply involved in student design courses for fusion energy systems. The core of the SPARC project was formed over eight years ago during a design course led by Whyte to challenge assumptions in fusion. Many of the ideas underpinning the high-field approach — including the use of HTS for high-field, demountable magnets, liquid blankets, and ARC (a fusion power plant concept) — have been conceived of or significantly advanced in his design courses.
Educated in Canada, Whyte earned his B. Eng. from the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD from the Université du Québec working on the Tokamak de Varennes, Canada’s national fusion facility. He worked at the DIII-D National Fusion facility for a decade and served as a senior lecturer at University of California, San Diego. He was an assistant professor in the Nuclear Engineering department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2002–2006. Whyte joined MIT in 2006 and served as MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering Department Head from 2015 to 2019.
He has served as leader of the Boundary-Plasma Interface Topical Group of the US Burning Plasma Organization and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics. Among his numerous awards and honors are the Department of Energy’s Plasma Physics Junior Faculty Award in 2003, the IAEA Nuclear Fusion Prize in 2013, and the Fusion Power Associates Leadership Award in 2018. He is also a two-time winner of the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching from the School of Engineering at MIT. Whyte has been a committee member on three previous NAS studies: “A Review of the DOE Plan for U.S. Fusion Community Participation in the ITER Program” (2009), “An Assessment of the Prospects for Inertial Fusion Energy” (2013), and “Bringing Fusion the U.S. Grid” (2021). He served as Director of the PSFC from 2014 to 2023.
Ph.D. Université du Québec, 1993
M.Sc. Université du Québec, 1989
B. Eng. University of Saskatchewan, 1986
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Magnetic reconnection is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature: solar flares, magnetospheric substorms and the sawtooth and tearing instabilities in tokamaks are just a few examples of fascinating events where reconnection plays a key role. One of my research interests is in understanding the instability of the reconnection site (the “current sheet”) to the formation of multiple magnetic islands (or plasmoids). A review-style discussion of this topic can be found here:
Magnetic reconnection is fundamentally an energy conversion mechanism: energy stored in the magnetic field is channeled into particle acceleration and heating. Another ongoing research direction aims to clarify the mechanisms for energy conversion in weakly collisional plasmas, particularly the importance of linear and nonlinear phase-mixing as electron and ion heating mechanisms. These issues are discussed in the two publications below:
The ability to keep a fusion-temperature plasma well confined is critical to the success of the fusion programme. This is often impaired by turbulence and/or macroscopic instabilities. My research addresses both of these topics.
A key tool in these investigations is the massively parallel code Viriato developed by myself and colleagues. Viriato solves the equations of a 4D physical model known as reduced-gyrokinetics, an asymptotically exact simplification of 5D gyrokinetics. The main aspects of the code and an extensive set of benchmarks can be found here:
A complementary aspect of my research is the confinement of very energetic, fusion-born, alpha particles, which are critical to keep the plasma hot and ensure that fusion can be self-sustained. Alphas can resonate with a particular set of plasma waves (Alfvén waves), leading to their destabilization and ensuing alpha transport away from the plasma core. This issue is of particular importance to ITER, which aims to hold the first-ever burning plasma. A recent publication detailing some aspect of this work is:
In addition to the above, I have an active interest in several fundamental aspects of magnetized plasma dynamics, such as magnetic field generation and amplification, and turbulence in strongly magnetized, weakly collisional plasmas (where again simulations with Viriato play a key role). My publications on these topics (and others) can be found in my google scholar webpage.