Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

Congratulations to Yufan Xu on being named a winner at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Lab Research SLAM! 🙌 Xu used inspiration from the movie Terminator 2 to illustrate how liquid metal 💧 can be an ideal material to protect the interior walls of doughnut-shaped 🍩 fusion devices known as tokamaks. Watch 👀 https://bit.ly/3QJnwAV.

Cheer on Yufan Xu, associate research physicist at PPPL, at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Research SLAM today at 4:30 p.m. (eastern time)! 📣 #NLSLAM25 Xu arrived in Washington, D.C. earlier this week to prepare for the competition and had the opportunity to tour the U.S Capitol with the other finalists from the DOE's 17 national labs. 👀 Tune in live: nlresearchslam.org

"The challenge is not to do fusion," says Steven Cowley, laboratory director at PPPL. "The challenge is to do fusion and make electricity at a cost that the consumer wants to pay for electricity."⚡ Cowley and Bob Mumgaard, co-founder and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, joined host Jeanne Meserve on the NatSec Tech podcast to discuss new findings in fusion research ⚛️ and its potential to transform the energy ecosystem. NatSec Tech is organized by the Special Competitive Studies Project - SCSP, a non-partisan, non-profit initiative that aims to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness. Listen 🎧 https://bit.ly/4h91Usw

Congratulations to our fantastic team from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Focused Energy, and UC San Diego for running our first proton focusing campaign on OMEGA-EP at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics! Our experiment investigated proton beam focusing techniques applied in so many ways to high energy density science. Most notably, they can generate the extreme environments only found in brown dwarf stars and the cores of planets like Jupiter, but now in a lab! One day, they may even be used to ignite #ICF capsules in fusion power plants! Special shout-out to my excellent team Sophia Malko, Xavier Vaisseau, Valeria Ospina Bohórquez, Maggie Rivers, Ryan Nedbailo, Mathieu Bailly-Grandvaux, Jesse Griff-mcmahon, Kirill Lezhnin and Frances Kraus for helping me lead my very first experiment as PI. It is truly a pleasure to work with you all. We are eternally grateful to Gabriel Schaumann and Sallee R. Klein and their teams for their wonderful work building and transporting our targets, to the entire OMEGA-EP control team for ensuring a successful shot day, and to Dr. Mingsheng Wei with the Laboratory Basic Science program (U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science) for this great opportunity.

Tomorrow's the big day! Get ready to hear from early career scientists and researchers who will compete in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Lab Research SLAM. 📣 Be sure to tune in from 4:30 to 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 5, to cheer on Yufan Xu from PPPL who will use inspiration from the movie Terminator 2 to illustrate how liquid metal 💧 can be an ideal material to protect the interior walls of doughnut-shaped 🍩 fusion devices known as tokamaks. Save the link to watch 👀 https://bit.ly/3QJnwAV.

Achieving stable, high-performance plasmas is a major challenge in the pursuit of fusion energy. ⚡Negative triangularity — a plasma shape that has shown the potential to maintain strong core performance without the disruptive edge instabilities common in traditional designs — represents a promising approach. Join Anne White, associate vice president for research administration in the MIT School of Engineering and distinguished professor of engineering in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Wednesday, March 5 to discuss research relating to negative triangularity. Attend online: https://bit.ly/43m3NPn

Construction 🚧 fences have gone up around our grounds, as machines dig holes 500 feet into the ground for geothermal wells that will help heat and cool our Lab's first new building in decades — the Princeton Plasma Innovation Center (PPIC). 🏗️ Work on the geothermal wells began in the fall, and continues today as crews drill and install around 70 wells, which will be connected through underground pipes to become part of a geoexchange system. Read more about PPIC's progress ➡️ https://bit.ly/3EZSVg8 Watch as members of the PPIC team share more about the geoexchange system. ⬇️

Artificial intelligence is transforming how we live, work, and conduct scientific research. Today, we partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratories to hold a first-of-its-kind “1,000 Scientists AI Jam Session” that brought together more than 1,000 scientists to explore how AI can accelerate scientific discovery. During Friday’s event, researchers across nine national labs—Argonne National Laboratory, Berkeley Lab, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)—tested advanced AI reasoning models, including OpenAI o3-mini, on thousands of scientific challenges in fields ranging from energy and physics to biology and medicine.  U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright joined OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to meet with participating researchers and emphasize AI’s critical role in the future of science, national security, and America’s global competitiveness. Secretary Wright told the scientists that AI has the potential to increase life expectancy, lead to the development of new drugs, and fuel innovation by allowing scientists to solve problems that were seen as intractable. Greg shared that he hoped AI would make scientists “10 times or 100 times more effective” at their work in the coming years. Today’s event builds on a long-standing tradition of the U.S. government working with companies to drive innovation, create jobs, fuel economic growth, and strengthen national security. We’re grateful to all the scientists who participated in today’s jam session, and look forward to continuing our work with the national labs to strengthen U.S. leadership in both AI and scientific discovery. You can read more about the event here: https://lnkd.in/g88bwwd6

Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 New Jersey Regional Science Bowl! 🙌 Teams from 48 schools throughout the state and surrounding region competed at the Lab to test their science knowledge ⚛️ across the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and general and earth sciences. The top team from each regional competition moves on to compete at the national competition in Washington, D.C. In the middle school competition, Princeton Charter Middle School came in first place. Fieldstone Middle School in Montvale, a first-time Science Bowl competitor, came in second place and William Anin Middle School in Basking Ridge came in third place. At the high school level, West Windsor-Plainsboro North High School came in first place, followed by PRISMS (Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science) High School in second place and Bridgewater-Raritan High School in third place. 👏 Plus, cheers to the Lab's science education team for organizing the event — Britt Albucker, Arturo Dominguez, Shannon Swilley Greco, Abdel Majid Kassir, and Deedee Ortiz — and the many PPPL staff who volunteered their time in support. 📸 by Michael Livingston and Elle S.

In one week, early career scientists and researchers will compete in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Lab Research SLAM. 📣 Be sure to tune in from 4:30 to 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 5, to cheer on Yufan Xu from PPPL who will use inspiration from the movie Terminator 2 to illustrate how liquid metal 💧 can be an ideal material to protect the interior walls of doughnut-shaped 🍩 fusion devices known as tokamaks. Save the link to watch 👀 https://bit.ly/3QJnwAV.