James W. Van Dam, Director The Institute for Fusion Studies

Contact Information

Research Interests

plasma physics; magnetohydrodynamics; kinetic theory; equilibrium and stability of thermonuclear fusion plasmas.

Current Work

analyzing the effects of alpha particles on MHD stability of ignited plasmas; analyzing magnetospheric substorm activity related to
plasma instabilities.

Biography

Dr. 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 the assistant director in 1986, associate director in 1991, and director in 2003. His research interests include kinetic theory, magnetohydrodynamics, plasma waves, ignition physics, equilibrium and stability in toroidal confinement fusion devices, and magnetospheric physics. He has published over 95 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 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 was the JIFT visiting professor at the National Institute of Fusion Science in Nagoya, Japan (1989-1990); the Center of Excellence visiting professor at the National Institute of Fusion Science in Toki, Japan (1998); and a Ministry of Education 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 Academician G. I. Budker: Remembrances and Reflections (1994). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (Division of Plasma Physics, 1992) and has been the organizer for 18 workshops and two international symposia, a consultant to industry, a visiting scientist at several laboratories, and a member of various national committees. 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 co-editor of the journal Comments on Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. He is the US chairman of the steering committee for the US-Japan Joint Institute for Fusion Theory exchange program, which has arranged bilateral workshops, exchange scientist visits, and joint computational projects for the past 25 years. He has been the chair of the U.S. Theory Coordinating Committee, the chair of the NSTX Program Advisory Committee, and a member of the C-Mod Program Advisory Committee. He currently serves as chair of the DIII-D National Fusion Facility Program Advisory Committee and chair of the International Advisory Committee for the Institute for Fusion Theory and Simulations (Zhejiang University). Also, he is a member of the NSTX Program Advisory Committee, the Fachbeirat External Review Panel of the Max-Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (Germany), the KSTAR International Advisory Committee, and the External Peer Review Panel for the National Institute for Fusion Science (Japan). Currently he is the director of the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization and chief scientist for the U.S. ITER Project Office of the U.S. Department of Energy. He serves as a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee for the Council of the ITER international burning plasma tokamak project.