John Palastro

Dr. John Patrick Palastro is a theoretical and computational physicist. His primary focus is in applied electromagnetics with emphasis on nonlinear laser-pulse propagation in a variety of media, plasma physics, advanced accelerators, and radiation generation. John received his B.S. degree, summa cum laude, in Applied Mathematics in 2002 from Clemson University and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2007. The title of his thesis was “Interaction of Lasers with Atomic Clusters and Structured Plasmas.” He served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2007 until 2009 where he investigated nonlinear laser-plasma processes relevant to inertial confinement fusion. From 2009–2014, John was a research scientist at the Institute for Research in Electronic and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland where his primary focus was on the propagation of high-power, short-pulse lasers through atmosphere and plasmas. This work continued during his time in the Beam Physics Branch at the Naval Research Laboratory from 2014–2017. John joined the Theoretical Plasma Theory Group at the University of Rochester, Laboratory for Laser Energetics in 2017.

A complete list of his papers can be found here.