Richard Nies

Undergraduate physics, University of Tübingen, Germany.

PhD, Princeton University, USA.

I study the properties of strongly magnetised plasmas relevant to magnetic confinement fusion in toroidal geometries (tokamaks and stellarators).

My research has focused on the turbulence and flows in such plasmas. During my PhD, I discovered a mechanism of nonlinear flow generation by turbulence that crucially depends on the toroidal geometry. I also demonstrated that the resulting flows saturate the turbulence by shearing apart turbulent eddies.

I am broadly interested in how geometry affects turbulence in fusion plasmas, and ultimately I aim to find ways to reduce the turbulent transport which severely hampers efforts to develop fusion energy.