Dr. Wright has been interested in fusion since his days as an undergraduate in the Applied Physics program at Columbia University. He received his PhD in Astrophysics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and served a post-doc in the Physics Department at the University of Madison-Wisconsin.

Principal Research Scientist at MIT direct research in radio frequency heating and current drive, with a focus on high performance computing.  Leading projects on developing machine learning surrogate models of RF codes and applying RF models to linear geometries.

• J. R. Myra, C. Lau,B. Van Compernolle, S. Vincena and J. Wright, “Measurement and modeling of the radio frequency sheath impedance in a large magnetized plasma”, Physics of Plasmas 27 (2020).
• Ye. O. Kazakov, J. Ongena, J. C. Wright, S. J. Wukitch, E. Lerche, M. J. Mantsinen,D. Van Eester, T. Craciunescu, V. G. Kiptily, Y. Lin, M. Nocente, F. Nabais, M. F. F.  Nave,         Y. Baranov, J. Bielecki, R. Bilato, V. Bobkov, K. Crombé,  A. Czarnecka, J. M. Faustin, R. Felton, M. Fitzgerald, D. Gallart, L. Giacomelli, T. Golfinopoulos et al.. “Efficient generation of energetic ions in multi-ion plasmas by radio-frequency heating”, Nature Phys. In press (available online) https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys4167 (2017).
• S. Shiraiwa, J. C. Wright, J.P. Lee and P. Bonoli, “HIS-TORIC: Extending core ICRF wave simulation to include realistic SOL plasmas”, Nucl. Fusion, In press 57 (2017).
• N. Tsujii, M. Porkolab, P. T. Bonoli, E. M. Edlund, P. C. Ennever, Y. Lin, J. C. Wright, S. J. Wukitch, E. F. Jaeger, D. L. Green and R. W. Harvey. “Validation of full-wave simulations for mode conversion of waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies with phase contrast imaging in Alcator C-Mod”, Physics of Plasmas, 22, 082502 (2015).
• J.-P. Lee and J. C. Wright. A block-tridiagonal solver with two-level parallelization for finite element-spectral codes. Computer Phys. Comm., 185, 2598 (2014).
• J. C. Wright and N. Bertelli, “The effects of finite electron temperature and diffraction on Lower Hybrid Waves. Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion”, 56, 035006 (2014).
• J. Wright, D. P. Schissel, G. Abla, S. Flanagan, M. Greenwald, X. Lee, A. Romosan, A. Shoshani and J. Stillerman, “The MPO API: A tool for recording scientific workflows”, Fusion Eng. & Design, 89, 754 (2014).
• Budny, R. V., Berry, L., Bilato, R., Bonoli, P., Brambilla, M., Dumont, R. J., Fukuyama, A., Harvey, R., Jaeger, E. F., Indireshkumar, K., Lerche, E., McCune, D., Phillips, C. K., Vdovin, V., Wright, J. & members of the ITPA-IOS, “Benchmarking ICRF full-wave solvers for ITER”, Nucl. Fusion, 2012, 52, 023023
• Wright, J. C., J-P. Lee, Bonoli, P. T., Phillips, C. K., Valeo, E. J., & Harvey, R. W., “Challenges in self-consistent full wave simulations of lower hybrid waves”, IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 38, 2136 (2010).
• Wright, J. C., Bonoli, P. T., Schmidt, A. E., Phillips, C. K., Valeo, E., Harvey, R. W., & Brambilla, M., “An assessment of full wave effects on the propagation and absorption of lower hybrid waves”, Physics of Plasmas, 16, 072502 (2009).

Talks

• J. C. Wright and the RF SciDAC Center.
  Time Dependent evolution of RF-generated non- thermal particle distributions in fusion plasmas. In W. W. Lee, editor, Twenty-Second International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Plasmas. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, LongBranch, NJ, https://icnsp2011.pppl.gov/presentations/ (2011).
• International Conference on Numerical Simulations in Plasmas Conference. Invited Talk. August 2015.
  How to find your data – 6 months later or The MPO System for Automatic Workflow Documentation.
• European Physics Society Plasma Physics Conference 2018 Prague. Antenna to Core: A New Approach to RF Modeling

Media

• Plasma Science and Fusion Center receives $1.25M from ARPA-E to explore practical paths to fusion (MIT News)
• Stephen Wukitch, John Wright win Landau-Spitzer Award (MIT News)
• Fusion heating gets a boost (MIT News)