Princeton University and PPPL Launch Collaborative Graduate Program in Plasma Science and Technology

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facility, and Princeton University recently launched the "Collaborative Research Program in Plasma Science and Technology" (CRPST). This two-year program, which began on July 1, 2026, aims to establish a more formal joint mentorship mechanism and expand opportunities for Princeton University graduate students in engineering, physics, and related disciplines to participate in research at PPPL.

Under the program, selected students will be jointly mentored by a PPPL scientist and a Princeton University faculty member. Students will work at PPPL at least one day per week, participate in relevant research groups, and use laboratory facilities to advance their projects. The program adopts a shared funding model, with CRPST covering half of the graduate student support each year, and the remaining half funded by the personal research grants of the Princeton University faculty mentor.

The program covers areas including fusion energy, plasma science and technology, machine learning applications, microelectronics, quantum materials and devices, electronic manufacturing, and computational physics, while also being open to topics aligned with the U.S. Department of Energy's mission and PPPL's key research areas. Program officials stated that CRPST will foster closer collaboration between university faculty and PPPL scientists around student research, advancing studies in plasma science and related technology fields.

Fatima Ebrahimi, CRPST Program Manager, stated that expanding collaboration between PPPL and Princeton University and increasing graduate student participation in laboratory plasma research have always been important goals of the program. She believes that the launch of the new program means the collaboration will become more systematic and will also help young researchers engage in mission-oriented research at an earlier stage.

The first cohort of six projects selected in 2026 covers research topics including ultrafast dynamics of laser writing of spin-lattice defects in wide-bandgap materials, plasma-induced halide exchange to stabilize perovskite semiconductor surfaces, three-dimensional photoluminescence tomography of co-doped quantum diamonds, structure-preserving model order reduction for Hamiltonian systems, machine learning molecular dynamics simulations for surface nitridation, and learning structure-aware preconditioners for implicit plasma simulations.

PPPL is located on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey, and is managed by Princeton University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. The laboratory's research areas include fusion energy, nanofabrication, quantum materials and devices, and sustainability science.