Matthew Cufari, a participant in LLE’s 2018 Summer High School Research Program, has been awarded the 2024 US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship. This prestigious award provides financial benefits and professional development opportunities to students pursuing a PhD in fields of study that address complex science and engineering problems critical to stewardship science. Matt’s work at LLE, while as a high school student and in subsequent summers as an undergraduate, involved implementing charged-particle transport in IRIS, a workhorse code used to interpret cryogenic implosions on OMEGA. Matt’s contributions are now being used by several graduate students at LLE and MIT. Matt received his undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and is now a graduate student at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT. He is currently studying the effects of externally imposed magnetic fields on implosion physics. Matt has performed experiments on OMEGA and, as part of his fellowship, is expected to continue this work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in an attempt to improve fusion yields. At LLE, Matt was advised by Radha Bahukutumbi and Owen Mannion.
