Faculty & Staff
Columbia Engineering Scientists Honored for Advancing Unique Fusion Approach
New approach could reduce the complexity of fusion power plants, researchers say.
Two Columbia Engineering scientists have won the 2026 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research from the American Physical Society as part of a team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s DIII-D National Fusion Facility.
Carlos Paz-Soldan and Oak Nelson, alongside an international team, were recognized for advancing a plasma shaping concept called “Negative Triangularity” (NT) as an alternative strategy for a tokamak fusion power plant. The traditional approach in operating a tokamak relies on positive triangularity, where the straight part of the D-shaped plasma faces the “donut hole” side of the donut-shaped tokamak. Negative triangularity reverses this shaping, placing the straight part of the “D” on the outside of the device.
A month-long effort co-led by Paz-Soldan and Kathreen E. Thome, staff scientist at General Atomics, featured the highest power NT scenarios ever realized. The researchers were able to achieve high confinement, high plasma current, and high normalized pressure simultaneously. Other members of the international team also demonstrated high density, favorable particle confinement, and a detached diverter without impurity seeding. The results suggest a possible pathway towards a less complex fusion power plant.
Nelson, postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia Engineering, made key contributions to the project through preemptive simulations and scenario design that helped to realize the theorized NT shapes. He also led a dedicated thrust characterizing the ability of NT shaping to suppress harmful plasma instabilities.
“It’s an honor to be part of the international team receiving this distinguished award and demonstrating the value of charting unexplored pathways to realize fusion energy,” said Paz-Soldan, associate professor of applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia Engineering and director of the Columbia Fusion Research Center.
“Negative triangularity could solve the exhaust problem faced by conventional tokamaks and provide a pathway towards a less complex fusion power plant,” said Nelson, associate research scientist in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia Engineering.
These efforts amplify student-led activities at Columbia Engineering to develop concept designs for negative triangularity fusion devices, including the recent CENTAUR breakeven fusion demonstration device and the MANTA prototypic fusion power plant.
Columbia fusion researchers look forward to continuing to contribute to negative triangularity research, on DIII-D as well as tokamak facilities worldwide.