Elizabeth Paul

Controlled fusion holds promise of providing a carbon-neutral, safe, and sustainable energy source. Professor Paul's work focuses on the advancement of the stellarator magnetic confinement concept, a complex toroidal device that enjoys enhanced stability properties.

Dr. Paul’s research integrates applied mathematical techniques to improve the design of stellarator configurations through numerical optimization. She studies the rich behavior present in three-dimensional magnetic confinement devices, including the nonlinear dynamics of fast particle populations.

Dr. Paul received her AB in Astrophysical Sciences with concentrations in Applied and Computational Mathematics and Applications of Computing from Princeton University in 2015. In 2020 she received her PhD in Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2021 Dr. Paul received the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Award from the American Physical Society in recognition of her doctoral work, “For pioneering the development of adjoint methods and application of shape calculus for fusion plasmas, enabling a new derivative-based method of stellarator design.” Prior to joining Columbia University, Dr. Paul was a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University.

Research Areas

• Plasma Physics (Controlled Fusion)
• Energy Science