Jim Van Dam received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1979 (with intermediate periods of graduate study also at the University of California, Berkeley, and Nagoya University, Japan). Subsequently, he was a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for one year, and then moved with Prof. Marshall Rosenbluth to the University of Texas when the Institute for Fusion Studies was established in 1980. Here he was a research associate until 1984, when he became a research scientist. He became assistant director in 1986, associate director in 1991, interim director in 2002, and director on October 1, 2003.
His research interests include kinetic theory, magnetohydrodynamics, plasma waves, ignition physics, and equilibrium and stability in toroidal confinement fusion devices. He has published 80 papers in these areas.
In particular, he collaborated with Y. C. Lee in developing the now-standard ballooning mode representation for tokamak stability theory; he and Y. C. Lee predicted a new fundamental stability limit for the bumpy torus device; he has performed stability studies for hot electron rings in symmetric tandem mirrors; and, with M. N. Rosenbluth, he proposed and analyzed the application of energetic particle stabilization in tokamaks. His current work is concerned with analyzing the effects of alpha particles on the stability of ideal and resistive MHD modes in ignited plasmas. His theoretical prediction with G. Y. Fu of the destabilization of toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes by fusion alpha particles received two independent experimental confirmations.
He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (Division of Plasma Physics, 1992) and has been the organizer for 13 workshops and two international symposia, a consultant to industry, a visiting scientist at several laboratories, and a member of various national committees. He served two years as the secretary-treasurer of the Sherwood International Fusion Theory Conference executive committee (1985-1987) and one year on the executive committee of the APS Division of Plasma Plasma (1987-1988). At present he is a member of the steering committees for the Varenna Workshop on Plasma Physics and the Asia-Pacific Plasma Theory Conference. He served ten years as the US executive secretary of the steering committee for the US-Japan Joint Institute for Fusion Theory exchange program and is now its US chair. He was a member of the Energetic Particles Expert Group for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, and he was also the head of the Fast Particle Working Group of the U.S. Department of Energy's Transport Task Force. He was the chief editor for the chapter "Physics of Energetic Particle" of the ITER Physics Basis Document published in a special issue of Nuclear Fusion. He has been co-editor of the journal Comments on Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion and also the executive secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy's Fusion Energy Science Advisory Committee.
He was the JIFT visiting professor at the National Institute of Fusion Science in Nagoya, Japan (1989-1990); the Center of Excellence visiting professor, also at the National Institute of Fusion Science, at its new campus in Toki, Japan (1998); and an MOE Visiting Professor at Gunma University in Japan (2001). He has supervised two Ph.D. graduate students and served on a number of other doctoral thesis committees at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published two books: "From Particles to Plasmas: Lectures Honoring Marshall N. Rosenbluth" (1989) and (with B. N. Breizman) "Academician G. I. Budker: Remembrances and Reflections" (1994).