Ahmed Diallo of Plainsboro has received an early career research program grant from the Department of Energy. He is a physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
His $500,000 per year award, which can be renewed for up to five years, will fund research into understanding and controlling the volatile edge of the superhot, charged plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions in devices called tokamaks. Controlling the edge of the plasma will be essential to harnessing fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for generating electricity.
Diallo, who serves as deputy boundary group leader for PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment, the laboratory’s major fusion facility, was one of 61 early career winners chosen from among 770 university and national laboratory-based applicants. The awards are designed to support exceptional young researchers who are working on projects that fall within the Office of Science’s six major areas of interest, which include fusion energy sciences.
“We’re overjoyed by this award,” said Michael Zarnstorff, PPPL deputy director for research. “It recognizes not only Ahmed’s work and promise, but also the importance of the pedestal for fusion energy.”
Diallo plans to use his grant in two main stages. He first plans to enhance a diagnostic system called Thomson scattering that uses laser light to study the formation of the pedestal region over short time scales. He then aims to employ a combination of methods to control the region.
Diallo, raised in the west African nation of Burkina Faso, came to the U.S. to earn a bachelor’s degree at the University of Montana. He spent the summer of his senior year at PPPL as a participant in the National Undergraduate Fellowship program. He received a doctorate in experimental plasma physics from the University of Iowa, and then did post-doctoral work at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and the Australian National University.
“I was very happy that a position opened up,” Diallo said about joining PPPL in 2009. “As an undergraduate, I had a great experience at PPPL and I had always wanted to work here.”
