Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Holger Reimerdes
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Citation:

"For seminal joint research providing key understanding and quantitative verification of global mode stability in experimental high performance tokamak plasmas, based on drift-kinetic MHD theory, and made possible by strong and essential partnership between Europe and the USA."

Background:

Holger Reimerdes, Ph.D., is the leader of the EUROfusion “Assessment of Alternative Divertor Geometries and Liquid Metals” project, and is a researcher at the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), where his focus is divertor physics and innovative plasma configurations. Dr. Reimerdes did his undergraduate work in physics at the University of Bayreuth (Germany), graduating in 1996 with a diploma thesis entitled, “Determination of Local Transport Coefficients During Edge Localized Modes in the ASDEX-Upgrade Tokamak”. He subsequently earned his Ph.D. in 2001 from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), with the thesis, “MHD Stability Limits in the TCV Tokamak”, before becoming a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University (New York). His Ph.D. thesis received the 2002 Swiss Physical Society’s ABB prize for General Physics Award. Dr. Reimerdes remained at Columbia through 2010, conducting a long-term assignment for General Atomics in San Diego, Calif., focusing on the stability of high beta plasmas and their response to externally applied non-axisymmetric magnetic fields, and resulted in the development of low-frequency active magnetohydrodynamics spectroscopy to measure resistive wall mode damping rates and rotation frequencies.


Selection Committee:

2016 Selection Committee Members: Richard Dendy (Chair), David Meyerhofer (Vice Chair), Stefano Atzeni (EPS), Alain Brizard (APS), James Hanson (APS) and Christophe Hollenstein (EPS)