Steven Cowley

Last updated

Professor
Sir Steve Cowley
FRS FREng FInstP
Professor Steven Cowley FRS.jpg
Cowley in 2014
7thDirector of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Incumbent
Assumed office
1 July 2018
Known for Fusion power
Awards Knight Bachelor (2018)
Glazebrook Medal (2012) [2]
Harkness Fellowship (1981–83)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Some Aspects of Anomalous Transport in Tokamaks: Stochastic Magnetic Fields, Tearing Modes and Nonlinear Ballooning Instabilities (Convection)  (1985)
Doctoral advisor Russell Kulsrud [4]

Sir Steven Charles Cowley (born 1959)[ citation needed ] is a British theoretical physicist and international authority on nuclear fusion and astrophysical plasmas. He has served as director of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) since 1 July 2018. [5] Previously he served as president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, since October 2016. [6] and head of the EURATOM / CCFE Fusion Association and chief executive officer of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). [6] He was appointed chair of the board of trustees of the Faraday Institution in July 2024. [7]

Contents

Education

Cowley won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics in 1981. [6] He went on to study at Princeton University as a Harkness Fellow and was awarded a PhD in 1985 for research into tokamaks supervised by Russell Kulsrud. [4] [8] [9] [10]

Career and research

Following his PhD, Cowley completed postdoctoral research at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). He returned to Princeton in 1987 and joined the faculty at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1993, becoming full professor in 2000. At Imperial College, London, Cowley led the plasma physics group from 2001 to 2003, while also serving as a part-time professor. [11] [12] He was appointed as the head of the EURATOM / CCFE Fusion Association in September 2008 and as CEO of UKAEA in November 2009.

On 18 March 2015, he was elected the 31st President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, his alma mater: he took up the post on 1 October 2016. He is the first scientist to hold the post. [13]

On 1 July 2018, he was appointed director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). [14]

Cowley's research interests are in plasmas and nuclear fusion, in astrophysical plasmas and the laboratory, such as the Joint European Torus (JET) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). [3] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] His research has been funded by Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). [23] [24] Cowley co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences assessment of plasma science in the United States. [25] [26] [27]

Awards and honours

Cowley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. His biography reads;

Steven Cowley is a leading plasma theorist and currently chief executive officer at the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Much of his research career has been devoted to modelling and understanding plasma turbulence in nuclear fusion, a phenomenon that must be controlled to achieve stable fusion.

Nuclear fusion will offer future generations a cleaner and safer source of energy and has the potential to meet the majority of the world's energy demands. At present, however, more energy is required to feed the process than can be produced. Steven is leading the UK's participation in ITER, an experimental reactor that is set to make nuclear fusion commercially viable.

Steven's interest in plasmas extends to those found on a large scale throughout the Universe. He showed that these astrophysical plasmas also invariably exhibit turbulence, which amplifies and shapes their magnetic fields. Steven presented a 2009 TED talk entitled Fusion is Energy's Future and received the 2012 Glazebrook Medal from the Institute of Physics, which rewards leadership in a physics context. [28]

His certificate of election reads:

Professor Cowley is currently chief executive officer at the UK Atomic Energy Authority and Professor at Imperial College. Over the last twenty years he has played a leading role in developing the multi-scale approach to computing the plasma turbulence in fusion experiments. Now such computations routinely reproduce experimental results. Multi-scale computational tools will be central to the successful development of fusion power. He discovered a key mechanism for the observed explosive eruptions from confined plasmas. Using analysis and computations Cowley and collaborators have shown that astrophysical plasmas are invariably turbulent. They have described the multi-scale spectra and structure of this turbulence and how it amplifies and shapes the magnetic field in the large scale plasmas of the universe. [29]

Cowley was also elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1998, [30] the Institute of Physics (FInstP) in 2004 [31] and the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2014. [32] He was awarded and honorary fellowship of the Institute of Engineering and Technology in 2015. In 2011, he was appointed to the UK Government's Council for Science and Technology. [33]

In the 2018 Birthday Honours, Cowley was appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to science and to the development of nuclear fusion. [34] In July 2019, Cowley was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) by the University of Lancaster for his standing as the international authority on fusion energy. [35]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory</span> National laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science at Princeton, New Jersey

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. Its primary mission is research into and development of fusion as an energy source. It is known for the development of the stellarator and tokamak designs, along with numerous fundamental advances in plasma physics and the exploration of many other plasma confinement concepts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plasma stability</span> Degree to which disturbing a plasma system at equilibrium will destabilize it

In plasma physics, plasma stability concerns the stability properties of a plasma in equilibrium and its behavior under small perturbations. The stability of the system determines if the perturbations will grow, oscillate, or be damped out. It is an important consideration in topics such as nuclear fusion and astrophysical plasma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITER</span> International nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject

ITER is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. It is being built next to the Cadarache facility in southern France. Upon completion of construction of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for 2033–2034, ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with six times the plasma volume of JT-60SA in Japan, the largest tokamak operating today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority</span> UK government research organisation

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

Rendel Sebastian "Bas" Pease FRS was a British physicist who strongly opposed nuclear weapons while advocating the use of nuclear fusion as a clean source of power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tokamak à configuration variable</span> Swiss research fusion reactor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

The tokamak à configuration variable is an experimental tokamak located at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. As the largest experimental facility of the Swiss Plasma Center, the TCV tokamak explores the physics of magnetic confinement fusion. It distinguishes itself from other tokamaks with its specialized plasma shaping capability, which can produce diverse plasma shapes without requiring hardware modifications.

An edge-localized mode (ELM) is a plasma instability occurring in the edge region of a tokamak plasma due to periodic relaxations of the edge transport barrier in high-confinement mode. Each ELM burst is associated with expulsion of particles and energy from the confined plasma into the scrape-off layer. This phenomenon was first observed in the ASDEX tokamak in 1981. Diamagnetic effects in the model equations expand the size of the parameter space in which solutions of repeated sawteeth can be recovered compared to a resistive MHD model. An ELM can expel up to 20 percent of the reactor's energy.

Derek Charles Robinson FRS was a physicist who worked in the UK fusion power program for most of his professional career. Studying turbulence in the UK's ZETA reactor, he helped develop the reversed field pinch concept, an area of study to this day. He is best known for his role in taking a critical measurement on the T-3 device in the USSR in 1969 that established the tokamak as the primary magnetic fusion energy device to this day. He was also instrumental in the development of the spherical tokamak design though the construction of the START device, and its follow-on, MAST. Robinson was in charge of portions of the UK Atomic Energy Authority's fusion program from 1979 until he took over the entire program in 1996 before his death in 2002.

The ballooning instability is a type of internal pressure-driven plasma instability usually seen in tokamak fusion power reactors or in space plasmas. It is important in fusion research as it determines a set of criteria for the maximum achievable plasma beta. The name refers to the shape and action of the instability, which acts like the elongations formed in a long balloon when it is squeezed. In literature, the structure of these elongations are commonly referred to as 'fingers'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culham Centre for Fusion Energy</span> UKs national laboratory for controlled fusion research

The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is the UK's national laboratory for fusion research. It is located at the Culham Science Centre, near Culham, Oxfordshire, and is the site of the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) and the now closed Joint European Torus (JET) and Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak (START).

Robert James Goldston is a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University and a former director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Miklos Porkolab (born March 24, 1939) is a Hungarian-American physicist specializing in plasma physics.

Hartmut Zohm is a German plasma physicist who is known for his work on the ASDEX Upgrade machine. He received the 2014 John Dawson Award and the 2016 Hannes Alfvén Prize for successfully demonstrating that neoclassical tearing modes in tokamaks can be stabilized by electron cyclotron resonance heating, which is an important design consideration for pushing the performance limit of the ITER.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Chapman (physicist)</span> British physicist and CEO of UKAEA

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Dmitri Dmitriyevich Ryutov is a Russian theoretical plasma physicist.

Keith Howard Burrell is an American plasma physicist.

Kunioki Mima is a Japanese plasma physicist. He is known for his contributions to the theory of turbulent transport in plasmas, and in particular the derivation of the Hasegawa–Mima equation in 1977, which won him the 2011 Hannes Alfvén Prize.

Patrick Henry Diamond is an American theoretical plasma physicist. He is currently a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a director of the Fusion Theory Institute at the National Fusion Research Institute in Daejeon, South Korea, where the KSTAR Tokamak is operated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendelstein 7-AS</span> Stellarator for plasma fusion experiments (1988-2002)

Wendelstein 7-AS was an experimental stellarator which was in operation from 1988 to 2002 by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching. It was the first of a new class of advanced stellarators with modular coils, designed with the goal of developing a nuclear fusion reactor to generate electricity.

Donato Palumbo was an Italian physicist best known as the leader of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) fusion research program from its formation in 1958 to his retirement in 1986. He was a key force in the development of the tokamak during the 1970s and 80s, contributing several papers on plasma confinement in these devices and leading the JET fusion reactor program, which as of 2021, retains the record for the closest approach to breakeven, the ratio between the produced fusion power and the power used to heat it. He is referred to as the founding father of the European fusion program.

References

  1. ↑ England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916-2007
  2. ↑ "Professor Steven Cowley FREng FRS". raeng.org.uk. Archived from the original on 20 December 2014.
  3. 1 2 Steven Cowley publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  4. 1 2 Steven Cowley at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ↑ "Steven Cowley named director of DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory". Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. 16 May 2018. Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 16 June 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 Anon (2016). "Cowley, Prof. Steven" . Who's Who (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U261946.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  7. ↑ "Professor Sir Steven Cowley announced as Faraday Institution Chair". the Faraday Institution. 10 May 2024.
  8. ↑ Cowley, Steven Charles (1985). Some Aspects of Anomalous Transport in Tokamaks: Stochastic Magnetic Fields, Tearing Modes and Nonlinear Ballooning Instabilities (Convection) (PhD thesis). Princeton University. OCLC   77633911. ProQuest   303381032.
  9. ↑ "Professor Steve Cowley". Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. Archived from the original on 16 April 2015.
  10. ↑ Steven Cowley at TED
  11. ↑ "Chief Executive Officer, Professor Steven Cowley". gov.uk. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  12. ↑ Davies, Sean (16 May 2011). "Q and A – Steve Cowley – Culham Centre for Fusion Energy". E&T: Engineering and Technology Magazine. 6 (5). The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014.
  13. ↑ "Corpus announces the election of its next President". Oxford: Corpus Christi College. Archived from the original on 21 April 2015.
  14. ↑ "Steven Cowley named director of DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory". 16 May 2018. Archived from the original on 16 May 2018.
  15. ↑ Steven Cowley publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  16. ↑ Ham, C J; Connor, J W; Cowley, S C; Hastie, R J; Hender, T C; Liu, Y Q (2013). "The role of pressure flattening in calculating tearing mode stability". Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. 55 (12): 125015. arXiv: 1308.2070 . Bibcode:2013PPCF...55l5015H. doi:10.1088/0741-3335/55/12/125015. ISSN   0741-3335. S2CID   119516411.
  17. ↑ Schekochihin, A. A.; Cowley, S. C.; Dorland, W.; Hammett, G. W.; Howes, G. G.; Quataert, E.; Tatsuno, T. (2009). "Astrophysical Gyrokinetics: Kinetic and Fluid Turbulent Cascades in Magnetized Weakly Collisional Plasmas". The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 182 (1): 310–377. arXiv: 0704.0044 . Bibcode:2009ApJS..182..310S. doi:10.1088/0067-0049/182/1/310. ISSN   0067-0049. S2CID   119630468.
  18. ↑ Schekochihin, Alexander A.; Cowley, Steven C.; Taylor, Samuel F.; Maron, Jason L.; McWilliams, James C. (2004). "Simulations of the Small-Scale Turbulent Dynamo". The Astrophysical Journal. 612 (1): 276–307. arXiv: astro-ph/0312046 . Bibcode:2004ApJ...612..276S. doi:10.1086/422547. ISSN   0004-637X. S2CID   119444289.
  19. ↑ Cole, M D J; Newton, S L; Cowley, S C; Loureiro, N F; Dickinson, D; Roach, C; Connor, J W (2014). "Electromagnetic effects in the stabilization of turbulence by sheared flow". Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. 56 (1): 015007. arXiv: 1308.0989 . Bibcode:2014PPCF...56a5007C. doi:10.1088/0741-3335/56/1/015007. ISSN   0741-3335. S2CID   118432893.
  20. ↑ Hammett, G W; Beer, M A; Dorland, W; Cowley, S C; Smith, S A (1993). "Developments in the gyrofluid approach to Tokamak turbulence simulations" (PDF). Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. 35 (8): 973–985. Bibcode:1993PPCF...35..973H. doi:10.1088/0741-3335/35/8/006. ISSN   0741-3335. S2CID   250771660.
  21. ↑ Howes, Gregory G.; Cowley, Steven C.; Dorland, William; Hammett, Gregory W.; Quataert, Eliot; Schekochihin, Alexander A. (2006). "Astrophysical Gyrokinetics: Basic Equations and Linear Theory". The Astrophysical Journal. 651 (1): 590–614. arXiv: astro-ph/0511812 . Bibcode:2006ApJ...651..590H. doi:10.1086/506172. ISSN   0004-637X. S2CID   15344422.
  22. ↑ Beer, M. A.; Cowley, S. C.; Hammett, G. W. (1995). "Field-aligned coordinates for nonlinear simulations of tokamak turbulence". Physics of Plasmas. 2 (7): 2687. Bibcode:1995PhPl....2.2687B. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.22.4582 . doi:10.1063/1.871232. ISSN   1070-664X.
  23. ↑ "Grants awarded to Steven Cowley, EURATOM/CCFE". Swindon: Research Councils UK. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  24. ↑ "Grants awarded to Steven Cowley, Imperial College London". Swindon: Research Councils UK. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  25. ↑ Plasma Science: Advancing Knowledge in the National Interest (National Academy Press 2007) ISBN   0309109396
  26. ↑ Steven Cowley: Fusion is energy's future, TED talk on YouTube, 2009-12-22
  27. ↑ Fusion energy with Professor Steven Cowley, Institute of Physics on YouTube
  28. ↑ Anon (2014). "Professor Steven Cowley FREng FRS". Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." -- "Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  29. ↑ "Professor Steven Cowley FRS, Chief Executive Officer, UK Atomic Energy Authority". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 5 August 2014.
  30. ↑ "List of Fellows of the American Physical Society" . Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  31. ↑ "Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory profile" . Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  32. ↑ "List of Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering" . Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  33. ↑ "UKAEA Steven Cowley to advise UK government". ITER. July 2011. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  34. ↑ "No. 62310". The London Gazette (Supplement). 9 June 2018. p. B2.
  35. ↑ "Honorary degree for Professor Sir Steven Cowley". www.lancaster.ac.uk. Lancaster University. Retrieved 18 July 2019.

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Preceded by31st President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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7th Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
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