Rate My Professor Eleanor Tubman

Eleanor Tubman is an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and an experimental physicist whose work bridges physics and nuclear engineering. Her research centers on laser-driven fusion and laboratory astrophysics, investigating the generation and evolution of electromagnetic fields in high-energy-density plasmas, production of collisionless shock waves, and development of diagnostics for measuring these fields. She earned an MPhys degree in Physics from the University of Sussex in 2012, with a master's thesis on particle physics searching for supersymmetric particles at the ATLAS detector. Tubman completed her PhD in 2016 at the University of York through the Fusion Doctoral Training Centre, supervised by Professor Nigel Woolsey, with a thesis entitled 'Magnetic Field Generation in Laser-Plasma Interactions'. Post-PhD, she served as a research associate at Imperial College London from 2016 to 2023 on the MAGPIE pulsed-power machine under Professor Sergey Lebedev's team. She collaborated on projects at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility and the Omega laser facility. From April 2023 to July 2024, she was a lecturer in experimental high-energy-density plasma physics at Imperial College London before joining Berkeley.

Tubman has made significant contributions to inertial confinement fusion through co-authorship on landmark National Ignition Facility experiments, including 'Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion' (Nature, 2022), 'Lawson criterion for ignition exceeded in an inertial fusion experiment' (Physical Review Letters, 2022), 'Achievement of target gain larger than unity in an inertial fusion experiment' (Physical Review Letters, 2024), and 'Experimental achievement and signatures of ignition at the National Ignition Facility' (Physical Review E, 2022). These publications document breakthroughs in burning plasmas, ignition, and net energy gain, impacting fusion energy research. She serves on the executive board of the NIF User Group and has given public lectures such as 'Here comes the sun: Harnessing inertial fusion energy' at UC Berkeley. Her work advances understanding of magnetized plasmas relevant to fusion energy and astrophysical phenomena.