Columbia Fusion Research Center welcomes summer undergraduate cohort

Summer is in full swing in the lab, with a cohort of well over 20 undergraduate students participating in summer research with the Fusion Research Center. This year, Columbia undergraduate students are joined by an external cohort of six NSF-funded REU students hailing from universities all across the country. Columbia students and REU students are working side-by-side on their respective projects:

The undergraduate students, pictured, are participating in all aspects of research at the lab:

• Two students are working on hard X-ray physics at the HBT-EP Tokamak experiment
• Three students are working on ablation physics and cryogenic technology at the Pellets at Columbia experiment
• Four students are working on superconducting magnet physics and technology at the Columbia Stellarator Experiment
• Two student are performing plasma astrophysics calculations with Columbia Astrophysics Lab colleagues
• Seven students are contributing to the assembly of the Columbia University Tokamak for Education
• Three students are performing calculations of tokamak stability and control
• Three students are performing calculations of stellarator optimization and analysis

As part of the summer program, staff and faculty mentors provide a special colloquium on Friday to introduce key research topics. Additionally, a graduate-student led speaker series also provides tutorial content in a less formal setting. We look forward to seeing the student’s results at the student poster symposium in August!