Dr. Valeri N. Goncharov is Distinguished Scientist and Theory Division Director at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. As Division Director, Dr. Goncharov leads LLE's staff of theoretical scientists.
Dr. Goncharov joined LLE in 1998 and was promoted to Senior Scientist in June of 2005. In April 2006 he became the Leader of the Theory Group. He is also an Assistant Professor (Research) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering teaching graduate courses on advanced mathematical methods, partial differential equations, fluid mechanics, and plasma physics.
Dr. Goncharov became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007 for his outstanding contributions to the theory of the ablative Rayleigh–Taylor and Richtmyer–Meshkov instabilities and for development of a technique to reduce the growth of these instabilities by means of adiabat shaping. His areas of research include hydrodynamic instabilities, plasma physics, thermal transport, and high-energy-density plasmas.
Dr. Goncharov received a B.Sc. in Nuclear Physics in 1993 from the Department of Theoretical Nuclear Physics at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in Moscow, Russia. He earned a M.Sc. in 1995 and a Ph.D. in 1998, both in Mechanical Engineering, from the University of Rochester.
