David Turnbull attended the University of California at San Diego as both a Regents and Jacobs Scholar, graduating summa cum laude and receiving the John E. Starrett, Jr. Memorial scholarship upon completion of his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2007. He went on to receive a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Princeton University in 2013, where he studied Applied Physics and Plasma Physics and wrote a thesis on plasma-based laser amplifiers. While in graduate school, he received both the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Fellowship as well as the Princeton Environmental Institute Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Fellowship; the latter afforded an opportunity to explore the environmental policy dimensions of his doctoral research. He then worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility—first as a postdoctoral scholar and later as a staff scientist—where he was responsible for the backscatter diagnostics and executed a number of experiments ranging from focused laser–plasma instability research to integrated inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions. In 2016, he joined the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics, where he continues to study experimental laser–plasma interactions related to ICF. He was recently awarded the 2020 Excellence in Fusion Engineering prize from the Fusion Power Associates in recognition of his “outstanding contributions to, and pioneering experiments on, plasma photonics and laser–plasma instability research.”
