Prize Recipient

Scott Hsu
California Institute of Technology

Citation:

"For the experimental investigation of driven magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma. In this work, careful diagnostic studies of the current sheet structure, dynamics and associated wave activity provide a compre-hensive picture of the reconnection process."

Background:

Scott C. Hsu received his B.S. degree summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993. While there, he was introduced to plasma physics through courses and undergraduate research projects with Professor Francis Chen. Scott held the UCLA Regents and National Merit Scholarships, and he won the UCLA Alumni Association Distinguished Scholar Award during his senior year. He received his Ph.D. in Plasma Physics from Princeton University in January, 2000, having investigated ion heating and acceleration during magnetic reconnection on the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) under Dr. Masaaki Yamada. Scott was supported by US-DOE Fusion Science and NASA Graduate Student Researcher Program Fellowships. Subsequently, Scott went to Caltech with a US-DOE Fusion Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Professor Paul Bellan on laboratory plasma experiments designed to study magnetic helicity injection during spheromak formation and also the problem of astrophysical jet formation. In December, 2002, Scott will join the P-24 Plasma Physics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Frederick Reines Fellow and continue pursuing research in basic experimental plasma science related to fusion energy and plasma astrophysics. He is a member of the American Physical Society, Division of Plasma Physics.

Selection Committee:

Ricardo Betti (Chair), Christina Back (12/02), Richard Groebner ('01 Rcpnt) (12/02), Y.Y. Lau (V Chair) (12/03), K. (Dennis) Papadopoulos (12/03)