Plasma: A Mysterious Matter

Evdokiya Kostadinova, Ph.D.: Plasma Physics Pioneer

No Interest in Science Whatsoever

I am not one of those people who would say “I knew I wanted to be a scientist since I was three years old!” I grew up in a lower-income family in a small country in southern Europe, called Bulgaria. In the 1990s, we did not have cool toys, such as constructor sets, puzzles, or science kits. Instead, due to my mom’s job as a nurse, my sister and I played with items she brought home from the hospital, such as pill boxes and cough syrup bottles.. There were TV shows dedicated to science and engineering. There were no hands-on lab classes as part of school activities. In fourth grade, I had to do exams for entry into middle school. One exam focused on literature and language, while the other exam focused on mathematics. I did better on the literature exam, which put me in a middle school program focused on humanities. Throughout middle and high school, I was told that I wasn't good at math and should pursue a career in law. I believed them — until I met Ms. Katsarova

Dina Katsarova was my 10th grade physics teacher. Whether students liked or hated physics, everyone loved and respected Ms. Katsarova. Before I took her class, I always asked myself “What do I want to do for a living?” After meeting her, I asked myself, “Who do I want to be as a person?” I wanted to be like her. She was a physicist, so I decided to pursue the same path.

Liberal Arts Education Can Get You Far

I moved to the US at the age of 18 to start an undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts university, called Furman University, in Greenville, SC. I applied to more than 20 programs in the US, but only Furman accepted me on a Good Will scholarship. That meant everything was paid for, and I didn’t have to take any loans. But I had no money and no car, so I started working at the interlibrary loan department of the university library at minimum wage, which I think was $7.25 an hour. One of the best jobs I ever had!

Furman had a good but small physics program, which meant that I did not take as many physics and math classes as students from technical schools. Instead, I had an additional major in political science and a minor in middle eastern and islamic studies. I was fully aware of the gaps in scientific knowledge, which made me feel insecure about my future career. However, a few of my physics peers were applying to graduate school, so I decided to give it a shot. I applied to five programs, got into three, and decided to attend Baylor University in Waco, TX.

I distinctly remember thinking that I miraculously got into graduate school, and it was only a matter of time before everyone would find out that I was not good enough to be there. I thought I would open the graduate textbook and not be able to understand anything. In addition, as an international student, I knew that failing in the program meant being kicked out of the US, as my legal status was tied to enrollment in graduate school. However, something amazing happens when you don’t have many options – you try your best and you somehow figure it out. Not only did I pass my graduate classes and PhD exams, but I managed to write and defend my dissertation, and graduate in 3.5 years, becoming a Ph.D. at the age of 25. One big secret for this success – I had a solid liberal arts education that taught me how to read, write, and communicate efficiently. Little did I know that this is a huge portion of being a scientist.

The Plasma Universe

The group at Baylor which I joined was doing research in something called dusty plasma (I never heard of this before graduate school). Dusty plasmas are gases in which only a small fraction of the atoms are split into ions and electrons (i.e., are in the plasma state of matter) and in addition, there are micron-sized particles, which we call dust. Why would one study that? Well, it turns out that a lot of processes in the universe, like planet formation, start as a dusty plasma cloud. It also turns out that both in space as well as on Earth, it is common to have dust and plasma coexist, like in the upper atmosphere of the Earth or on the surface of the Moon.

While dusty plasma research was curious on its own, the most fascinating aspect of doing this job is meeting the people. I joined this community because from the start I felt that there is a sense of comradery, an element of entrepreneurship, and a promise of discovery. People who do dusty plasma research often ask very simple questions, such as “How do charged dust particles stick to surfaces and to each other in outer space?” Then one is surprised and fascinated to learn how complex it becomes to answer such a question and show that your answer is correct.

My research work became focused on providing a physical interpretation of new math models and testing my interpretations in different plasma systems, such as dusty plasma. Similarly, for each model, I must answer two very simple questions: “Does it scale?” and “Is it universal?” Scaling is the question of how things change as we go bigger or smaller. Universality is the question of what things stay the same when we go from one system to another. To build a good model explaining how a given system works, both principles need to be understood.

The ability to ask simple questions with curiously complicated explanations allowed me to expand my research from dusty plasma to all sorts of fields where the plasma state of matter is important. Those include fusion energy, aerospace engineering, space weather, and origins of life. This allowed me to build a highly cross-disciplinary research group of my own once I got hired as an Assistant Professor at Auburn University in Auburn, AL. My Auburn research group calls itself IPL (Interdisciplinary Plasma Lab) and the only rule to be part of it is to be interested in very simple questions with very complicated answers.