SULI Student Highlighted by DOE

I serve as a mentor in the undergraduate research program at DIII-D and one of my students from 2015 was shown as a highlight by the Department of Energy (DOE)! The highlight is from a DOE presentation dated February 19, 2016, but I only recently found it. The presentation is an overview of the multiple DOE workforce programs that provide undergraduate students, teachers, and other scientists with opportunities to work at national labs. These are great programs, but slide 12 is the champion of this set (which is also placed at the end of the post),

Opportunities for Undergraduates and Faculty at DOE Laboratories (PDF, 3 MB), Jim Glownia and Cindy White, February 19, 2016.

DIII-D participates in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program that brings undergraduate students to the lab for nine weeks every summer. Their first week is spent in a plasma physics course at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), which makes this a unique program that provides a top-notch overview of plasma physics. PPPL even makes the course available publicly, as seen here for the 2016 series.

Now for the highlight itself, showing off an incredibly productive summer from Victoria Riso and Christopher Cooper. Victoria measured the latent gamma ray background within the DIII-D pit and we use this information to improve the gamma ray imager diagnostic.