Active Research Projects
Breeding Blanket
A commercially viable deuterium-tritium fusion device needs a blanket to shield against neutrons and produce tritium. Columbia’s research in this area is focused on extracting tritium from the blanket and modeling how conducting blanket concepts interact with plasma dynamics.
Disruption Mitigation Research
Design against off-normal events is an essential part of fusion energy research. The rapid quench of the tokamak plasma (called a 'disruption') releases a burst of energy into the reactor vessel that must be controlled. Research involves designing systems and techniques to manage this energy release in a benign manner.
News
Carlos Paz-Soldan and Oak Nelson win the 2026 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research
Congratulations to Carlos Paz-Soldan and Oak Nelson from the Columbia University Fusion Research Center on winning the 2026 John Dawson Award for from the American Physical Society!
Columbia Fusion Researchers Lecture at Fusion Summer Schools
Members of the Columbia Fusion Research Center participated as lecturers at the 1st Mitigating Risks from Abrupt Confinement Loss (MiRACL) and 7th MIT Computational Physics School for Fusion Research (CPS-FR) summer schools held at MIT from July 30 through August 8
Fourth Annual Summer Student Poster Symposium
The fourth Annual Summer Student Poster Symposium, hosted by the Columbia Fusion Research Center, showcased the work of 32 undergraduate researchers across experimental and computational topics on August 5th, 2026.