Tammy Ma Wins 2016 Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research

COLLEGE PARK, MD, July 20, 2016 – Tammy Ma of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has won the American Physical Society’s 2016 Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research.

The award citation recognizes Ma for “innovation and leadership in quantifying hydrodynamic instability mix in Inertial Confinement Fusion implosions on the National Ignition Facility and for key contributions to experiments demonstrating fusion fuel gains exceeding unity.”

The award annually honors an individual researcher who has made outstanding theoretical, experimental, computational, or technical contributions in plasma physics early in their career. It was established in 2013 by a contribution from the Division of Plasma Physics. Ma will receive a $2,000 stipend and a certificate when the award is presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics in San Jose, CA. The meeting will take place from October 31 to November 4.

Tammy Ma is an experimental physicist in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and high energy density physics at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She graduated from Caltech in 2005 with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. She received her M.S. in 2008 and Ph.D. in 2010 both from the University of California, San Diego. Ma subsequently completed a postdoc at LLNL before transitioning to a staff scientist in 2012, where she now leads a number of the fusion experiments at the NIF and currently heads the X-­Ray Analysis Group for the ICF program. She has authored or co­authored over 110 refereed journal publications and is strongly committed to education and scientific outreach. Ma was recently awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

Contact: James Riordon, APS, riordon@aps.org, (301) 209-3238