PPL hosted a virtual tour of the Laboratory on Jan. 21 for some 125 young women to kick off the College and University Women in Physics (CUWiP) online conference. Shannon Swilley Greco, center, led the tour, along with physicist Erik Gilson, left, and engineer Jessica Guttenfelder.
Ash Coleman, a junior at Thomas More University with a double major in mathematics and physics, left, and Brooke Gerry, a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire majoring in aerospace engineering with a minor in astronomy, were two of the participants in the online tour.
Newswise — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) hosted an online tour of the Laboratory for some 125 mostly female undergraduates and physics enthusiasts to kick off the American Physical Society’s Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) Conference on Jan. 21.
Leading the tour was Shannon Swilley Greco, a Science Education senior program leader, with principal research physicist Erik Gilson and engineer Jessica Guttenfelder. The event introduced “visitors” to PPPL’s major experiments, including the Laboratory’s flagship experiment, the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U), and featured live plasma demonstrations by Swilley Greco. The speakers also touched on careers and internships and had a lively online dialogue with participants during the presentation.
“I think the informal, conversational tone helps to show that we are an inclusive and welcoming space,” Swilley Greco said. “I think it’s good to convey that there are good people here who want to engage students for the development of our workforce. We’re ambassadors for the field!”
Brooke Gerry, a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire majoring in aerospace engineering with a minor in astronomy, said she enjoyed learning about a new field of physics during the tour. “I don’t know a lot about plasma physics,” she said, “and hearing them talk about their research and all the different parts of what’s going on: the engineering aspect versus the physics aspect, made me a lot more interested in plasma physics, which is exciting because now I have a whole new aspect of physics to explore.”
Gerry said she is one of only three female physics majors in her physics program. She said it was nice seeing so many women who are as enthusiastic about physics as she is. “I definitely loved that I got to meet other women in physics and science,” she said. “It made me feel less alone.”
CUWiP, which is supported in part by the DOE’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation, is usually a three-day regional conference held at several institutions around the country. The conference this year moved to a consolidated all-remote conference starting with the virtual PPPL tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The more than 125 participants in the conference were among 1,400 people attending the CUWiP Conference from Rutgers University, a host institution, and dozens of other universities. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) held a separate online CUWiP conference that included participants from 60 countries, many of whom attended the PPPL tour.
Networking and careers discussion
In addition to hosting the tour, Swilley Greco was the moderator of a career panel at the conference and participated in a networking event and poster session using Gather Town, an online platform that allows participants to create cartoon avatars and move around a map meeting one another. Arturo Dominguez, the head of Science Education, also participated in a Jan. 21 CUWiP panel in which he discussed the DOE’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) and Community College Internship (CCI) programs at PPPL.
Introduction to plasma with live demonstrations
Swilley Greco started the virtual tour by giving a brief introduction into what a plasma is, with the audience chiming in with examples of plasma, including the sun, fire, lightning, and the Aurora Borealis. Swilley Greco demonstrated a plasma in a half-coated fluorescent bulb and showed how a magnet attached to the bulb moved the plasma.
Guttenfelder, a mechanical engineer and technical operations supervisor of Heating Systems on Neutral Beams, gave an overview of the NSTX-U, a spherical tokamak that is shaped more like a cored apple than the traditional doughnut-shaped device. She explained that magnets are used to confine the plasma and a central magnet called a solenoid helps create the magnetic field. Swilley Greco demonstrated this principle with a plasma demonstration in which a magnet makes a copper ring jump.
Guttenfelder also discussed the role of neutral beams, which are used to help heat the plasma to more than 100 million degrees Celsius. While PPPL’s experiment does not heat up water, create steam and create electricity, fusion power plants of the future will do exactly that, she said.
Highlighting personal career paths
Guttenfelder shared her own background as an engineer. After graduating from college with a degree in engineering, she worked on scanning electron microscopes for an optics company. While that might seem a far cry from fusion energy and plasma physics technology, the technology is very similar to neutral beam technology, she said.
Gilson also discussed his professional background. While he has graduated with a degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and had worked on basic plasma research, his research at first focused on accelerators and heavy-ion fusion. Gilson now works on a liquid metal Magnetorotational Instability Experiment (MRI) at PPPL that studies accretion discs, flat disc-like structures in space made of gas, dust, plasma, or particles that rotate around and fall into, stars, black holes, and other massive objects.
Exploring astrophysics in the laboratory
“We’re doing lab astrophysics to learn things that would be hard to learn through observations or computer simulations,” Gilson said. Another experiment at PPPL, the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) and a more advanced version of the experiment under construction called the Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiment (FLARE), study the magnetic reconnection process that is responsible for the Northern Lights, solar flares, and geomagnetic storms.
Gilson also gave an overview of the Lithium Tokamak Experiment-Beta (LTX-ß), which is studying how the liquid metal lithium can be used to protect the inner wall of fusion devices called tokamaks and can result in better plasma performance.
Swilley Greco noted that PPPL is expanding its mission into areas like the use of low-temperature plasmas for applications such as plasma-based sterilization methods. PPPL is expanding its mission to explore these applications, including the use of plasma in the semiconductor industry.
Encouraging participation in internships
In addition to the introduction to PPPL, the three tour guides fielded questions about the skills needed for the SULI and CCI programs and a new internship program hosted by PPPL called the Plasma Fusion Undergraduate Research Opportunity (PFURO), which allows students to do plasma and fusion-related research at institutions around the country. Swilley Greco and Gilson said they prefer applicants who discuss their own interest in physics and research rather than discussing how much they like PPPL.
Ash Coleman, a junior at Thomas More University with a double major in mathematics and physics, said she was happy that the online CUWiP program was so interactive. “I was concerned about sitting in lectures and listening to people talk like I was in class again, but honestly going to the tour on Friday, the first thing that CUWiP had scheduled, really brought my expectations up a lot,” Coleman said.
In addition to the active chat on Zoom, Coleman and other students set up their own separate group chat in which some 80 people participated. They also joined a CUWiP group on the chat platform Discord in which more than 800 people, including past year participants, can chat in various interest groups. Coleman said hearing the three PPPL hosts talk made the Laboratory seem like an attractive place to work. “They all seemed very relaxed and very much like they’re a family,” Coleman said. “I just got a really nice feeling from them like I think I would enjoy working in an environment like that.”
PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas — ultra-hot, charged gases — and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.
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