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Riccardo Betti

Assistant Director for Academic Affairs


Prior to joining LLE and the faculty of the University of Rochester in 1991, Dr. Riccardo Betti studied nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Betti has acted as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Comissariat á l’Ènergie Atomique, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In conjunction with his work at LLE, Dr. Betti is professor of mechanical engineering and physics & astronomy for the University of Rochester as well as a supervisor of theses for thirteen students. Betti is also a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the Fusion Energy Science Advisory Committee, convener of the working sub-group on IFE target stability at the 1999 and 2002 Snowmass Fusion Summer study, chair of both the committee for the 2002 Excellence in Plasma Physics Award and the Sherwood International Fusion Theory Conference Executive Committee.

Prof. Betti also conducts research in two areas: inertial confinement fusion with a focus on the hydrodynamic instability of ICF capsule implosions and magnetic fusion energy. Betti’s work in inertial confinement fusion has resulted in a theory of the deceleration phase Rayleigh–Taylor instability, a self-consistent stability theory of the ablation front Rayleigh–Taylor instability, and a perturbation feedout theory. His work in magnetic fusion energy has resulted in theories concerning tokamak equilbria with poloidal flow, resistive wall mode in rotating plasmas and liquid walls, and fishbone oscillations induced by tangentially injected neutral beams, as well as the discovery of the Elllipticity-Induced Alfvén Eigenmode (EAE), and ion Landau damping stabilization of the Toroidal Alfvén Eigenmode (TAE).

Professor Betti received a Baccalaureate/Master in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Rome in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. He has been awarded the Ansaldo Fellowship (1988), a Fulbright Fellowship (1986), and the T. J. Thompson Fellowship (MIT, 1990).