PPPS2019 will host a symposium for Young Professionals at the conference hotel on Wednesday, 26 June 2019, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. The symposium will consist of two consecutive panels of established professionals willing to provide information in a Q&A format that will be helpful to folks early in their careers.
Funding Panel
The first panel will focus on Funding: ways to get funding for your research, what kind of funding agencies are out there, what are restrictions common to these agencies, what kinds of things they look for in proposals, etc.
| Speaker | Affiliation |
| Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin | NSF |
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Dr. Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin received the BA in Physics and Mathematics from Swarthmore College and PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University. His PhD studies, split between Princeton Univ. and Los Alamos Nat'l Lab, were supported by graduate fellowships administered by the National Science Foundation and the ORISE Fusion Energy Sciences program. Dr. Lukin completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Univ. of Washington in 2009, when he joined the staff of the US Naval Research Laboratory, Space Sciences Division. Dr. Lukin is the lead developer of the HiFi open source multi‐fluid modeling framework with users around the world and published applications to laboratory, space, and solar plasmas. Since late 2014, Dr. Lukin is a Program Director for the Plasma Physics program in the NSF Division of Physics with lead responsibility for the NSF/DOE Partnership in Basic Plasma Science and Engineering.
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| Nate Lockwood | AFOSR/EOARD |
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Dr. Nathaniel Lockwood is a civilian plasma physicist and a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve with more than 23 years of experience in leading, developing, managing, and simulating defense related technologies. Dr. Lockwood received his B.S. in Space Physics at the US Air Force Academy and his General Engineering Physics M.S. and PhD at the Air Force Institute of Technology. As a civilian, Dr. Lockwood is the Directed Energy International Program Officer with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research International Office. As a military member, Lt Col Lockwood is the Joint Technology Manager and Directed Energy specialist for the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. His expertise includes plasma physics and modeling, radiation transport and effects, plasma and gas laser chemical kinetics, electronic warfare, High Power Microwave (HPM) devices and field emission cathodes and electron guns. He has developed and implemented several directed energy systems and developed multiple particle and plasma physics simulations. He has performed numerous theoretical and experimental studies of plasmas, plasma-material interactions, HPM and laser systems, terahertz source components, and electronic warfare systems.
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| Nirmol Podder | DOE/OFES |
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Dr. Nirmol Podder is a Program Manager at the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, Office of Science, DOE. He has been at DOE for the last 10 years. Currently, he manages the FES General Plasma Science portfolio which includes basic and low temperature plasmas, and coordinates the FES part of the Office of Science Early Career Research Program. He has managed the review of a variety of FES funding opportunity announcements, including opportunities for postdoctoral researchers and students.
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| Mark Sinclair | AWE |
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Mark A. Sinclair was awarded a BSc(Hons) degree from the University of Manchester in England and an MSc in Laser Engineering and Pulsed Power Technology from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He then joined the Pulsed Power Group at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the last to join whilst Charlie Martin was still active in the field. At AWE he started work on the E Minor machine and progressed to be the lead scientist on Mogul E which became AWE’s most powerful flash x-ray machine for Hydrodynamic radiography. He then progressed to build up a broad understanding of AWE’s full suite of Pulsed Power machines, examining and refining their design and operation and archiving and analysing past performance data. He also participated in AWE’s early investigations in Laser Driven X-Ray sources at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories. He progressed to become the Team Leader for Pulsed Power at AWE, managing a group of 14 scientists and engineers and took on the budget responsibilities for Pulsed Power capability development. These responsibilities led to the development of closer links and collaborations with other companies and government organisations within Europe and the USA. Currently, he is leading efforts on AWE’s next generation x-ray capabilities to support its core programme. These capabilities are being jointly developed with CEA in France for the mutual benefit of both countries. In 2017 he also chaired the 21st IEEE Pulsed Power Conference in Brighton, the first time this conference has been held outside the USA.
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Employment/Careers Panel
The second panel will focus on Employment and Careers: what are the different types of careers available (academic, industrial, government), how to compare the details of different job offers, what things are important to focus on, etc.
| Speaker | Affiliation |
| Rebecca Seviour | University of Huddersfield |
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Rebecca Seviour is currently head of Accelerator Research at the University of Huddersfield (UK). Prior to joining Huddersfield, she was the Lise Meitner Professor at Lund University (Sweden), with a joint position at the European Spallation Source. Rebecca’s current research interests are in RF for particle accelerators and the use of metamaterials for high-power applications, with a focus towards novel high-power RF oscillators and amplifiers in the GHz regime. Rebecca has had a varied research career spanning physics, engineering and computing; from using numerical scattering techniques and analytical Green’s function techniques for the study of phase-coherent transport in hybrid mesoscopic structures, to the study of neo-classical tearing modes in Tokamak plasmas; from developing software for face/behaviour image recognition systems, to developing software routines to identify stars, clouds, and aurora in CCD images; from developing theory and numerical modelling tools for studying and predicting multipactor discharges in vacuum electronics, to examining the use of photonic band gap structures for the development of tabletop particle accelerators.
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| David French | Lam Research |
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David French received the B.S. degree in physics from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA, in 2006, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 2008 and 2011, respectively. In 2011, David joined the Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate in Albuquerque NM. At AFRL his focus was on a variety of high power electromagnetic technologies including compact pulsed power, relativistic beam driven microwave devices, nonlinear transmission lines, RF and laser generated plasmas, and RF effects on electronic systems. In 2015, David joined Lam Research Corporation in the Deposition Product Group in Tualatin OR. David is responsible for RF systems and RF power delivery to plasmas used in commercial PECVD applications including all aspects of development and support for RF generation, distribution, matching, delivery, and measurements.
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| George Laity | Sandia National Labs |
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Dr. George Laity is the R&D Manager of the Advanced Pulsed Power Capabilities Group at Sandia National Laboratories, which is responsible for developing innovative plasma diagnostics, pulsed power codes, and power flow / current coupling research supporting next-generation pulsed power accelerator design. He has contributed to a variety of technical topics including: pulsed power accelerator technology, high energy density physics, vacuum insulator flashover, high power electromagnetics, vacuum arc ion sources, plasma code development, and optical/plasma diagnostics. He is a member of the IEEE and APS, and was elected to the AdCom of the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society in 2018. He was General Conference Chair of the 2018 IEEE International Power Modulator and High Voltage Conference, and serves on the technical program committees of several international conferences. He received the B.S. degree in Physics, and the M.S./Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University in 2008, 2010, and 2013 respectively.
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| Nick Jordan | University of Michigan |
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Nicholas M. Jordan received the B.S.E., M.S.E., and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 2002, 2004, and 2008, respectively. He was with Cybernet Systems for 5 years, where he was involved in the development of microwave vehicle stopping technology, before returning to UM as an Assistant Research Scientist with the Plasma, Pulsed Power, and Microwave Laboratory in 2013. His current research interests include high-power microwave devices, pulsed power, laser ablation, Z-pinch physics, and plasma discharges.
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| Ricky Ang | Singapore University of Technology and Design |
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Lay-Kee (Ricky) Ang (S’95-M’00-SM’08) is the Head of Science and Mathematics at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the Ng Teng Fong Chair professor for SUTD-Zhejiang University Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship Alliance (IDEA). He received his B.S. degree from the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, R.O.C. in 1994, and the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1996 and 1999 respectively. From 1999 to 2001, he was a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) director funded postdoctoral fellow in the Applied Physics Division. Before joining SUTD, he was a tenured Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interest is in the development of theoretical scaling laws and models in the interaction of Electron, Photon, Plasmonic and Plasma on various projects funded by Singapore (MOE, A*STAR) and USA (AOFSR-AOARD and ONR-Global). He became one of the IEEE NPSS Distinguished Lecturers in 2018. He was also supported by the AFOSR-AOARD Window of Science program (2007, 2012, 2015, 2018) and ONR Global visiting scientist program (2009, 2017) to present many technical seminars in USA institutions. He was also the founding chair of the IEEE NPSS Singapore chapter in 2013-2014.
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Each panel will have 45 minutes to answer questions from the audience, guided by a moderator. Heavy appetizers will be available for the participants.
The PPPS 2019 Young Professionals Symposium is organized by Dr. William White (Sandia National Laboratories), Dr. Brad Hoff (Air Force Research Laboratory), and Dr. Matt Gomez (Sandia National Laboratories). As the conference approaches, we will have more information available on this site – and if you have any questions, feel free to email wmwhite@ieee.org.
Job Posting Board
A Job Posting Board will be made available for participants in the conference! We will have a poster board set up near the meeting rooms, where prospective employers—including those in industry, the national labs, and universities—may put up active job openings. Individuals looking for a new career may peruse the postings and contact members of the recruiting teams that are present at the conference – as is convenient for both parties!
About IEEE Young Professionals
IEEE Young Professionals is the group of IEEE members and volunteers who have graduated from their first professional degree within the past 15 years. It is an international community, whose members are interested in elevating their professional image, expanding their global network, connecting with peers locally and giving back to their community. Since it encompasses all members from recent university graduates to experienced professionals and entrepreneurs, the group is highly diverse in what it has to offer.
