Young Faculty Scholar Awardee:
Dr. David A. Maurer

David Maurer is a professor in the Department of Physics. His research is focused on magnetically confined plasmas, specifically those for application for the generation of fusion energy.

Dr. Maurer’s goal since beginning his research at Auburn University in 2011 has been to advance the understanding of three dimensional shaping of confined plasmas on the Compact Toroidal Hybrid (CTH) device. Since working on the CTH device, Dr. Maurer and his group have suppressed and ameliorated several major types of catastrophic plasma termination observed on tokamaks.

He plans to continue this area of research by beginning a more systematic study of the detailed causes for the observed performance enhancement with strong magnetic shaping already observed on the CTH and is actively working to expand his research internationally. He is currently in the process of working to collaborate on the Wendelstein-7 Experiment (W7-X) at the Institute of Plasma Physics at Griefswald, Germany. He also plans to conduct new research on the CTH, exploring edge plasma transport and flow physics in the presence of a magnetic island structure.

Dr. Maurer believes that his research can be a first step in the direction of motivating the construction of a new device that could explore the full range of magnetic configurations from an axisymmetric tokamak plasma to a quasi-symmetric or fully 3D current carrying plasma.

Dr. Maurer received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin, and a Master of Philosophy and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.