Sc.D. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014)
S.M. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2009)
B.S. Electrical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2006)
B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2006)
Plasma diagnostic/actuator development and construction; signal processing; analog and digital circuit design and fabrication; physics data mining; use of large parallel simulation codes.
My current research is concerned with identifying the plasma fluctuations that regulate transport across the plasma boundary, and creating actuators to control them in order to better achieve sustained, high-performance tokamak operation. This is achieved when impurities in the plasma – derived mainly from the plasma-facing wall components – are exhausted rapidly across the boundary, requiring adequately-large particle transport, without simultaneously causing heat to be lost from the plasma, meaning that outward heat transport must be minimized. The main active tool employed in this work is the “Shoelace” antenna, a unique device built to perturb the plasma in a way which mimics the intrinsic plasma waves (~50-500 kHz and ~4-cm wavelength) that control edge transport in high-performance regimes. I have also worked on experiments employing amplitude modulation on higher-frequency carriers (~80 MHz and 4.6 GHz) to couple nonlinearly to these lower-frequency modes.
In my spare time, I work with a wonderful program called MEET (Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow) which brings together excelling Palestinian and Israeli youth in a rigorous educational program of computer science, entrepreneurship, and dialogue.