Elena Belova of Plainsboro received the Katherine E. Weimer Award at the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics in Denver last month. She was cited for pioneering analytical and numerical contributions to the fundamental physics of magnetically confined plasmas.##M:[more]##
After majoring as an undergraduate in numerical methods and applied mathematics, she received a master’s degree in space plasma physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1987. She worked as a staff member in the Russian Academy of Science’s Space Research Institute in Moscow for several years.
In 1992 she moved to the United States and received her doctorate degree in plasma physics from Dartmouth College in 1997. At that time she joined PPPL as a postdoctoral research fellow. She is now a research physicist in PPPL’s Theory Department with a major interest in the interaction of energetic particles with magnethydrodynamic waves and the influence of kinetic effects on MHD modes in space and laboratory plasmas. Belova is the first author of 21 scholarly publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings.
