Lawrenceville Plasma Physics was founded in 1974 in Lawrenceville, NJ, by Eric Lerner.  LPP was incorporated in 2003 and built its lab in Middlesex, NJ, in 2009. Our primary research device, "Focus Fusion-1" became operational in Oct. 2009, and continues to make progress toward our goal of clean fusion energy.

Personnel

Eric J. Lerner, President

Eric Lerner has been active in dense plasma focus (DPF) research for over 25 years.  Beginning in 1984, he developed a detailed quantitative theory of the functioning of DPF.  Based on this theory, he proposed that the DPF could achieve high ion and electron energies at high densities, suitable for advanced fuel fusion and space population.  Under a series of contracts with JPL, he planned and participated in carrying out experiments that tested and confirmed this theory.  In addition, he developed an original model of the role of the strong magnetic field effect on DPF functioning, showing that this effect could have a large effect on increasing ion temperature and decreasing electron temperature, which would reduce unwanted X-ray cooling of the plasma.  He is a leading researcher in cosmology and astrophysics, developing original, plasma-based theories of quasars, large-scale structures and other phenomena of the Universe.   He was recently a Visiting Astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile.  As a writer about science and technology, he is the author of over 600 articles.  Mr. Lerner received a B.A. in Physics from Columbia University and did graduate work in physics at the University of Maryland.

Research Team

Dr. Krupakar Murali Subramanian joined LPP as a Senior Research Scientist and Supervisor in December 2008. He was born in New Delhi, India, and received his B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from K. L. College of Engineering, affiliated to Nagarjuna University, Guntur, India. He then moved to the USA and received his first MS degree in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. He received his second MS degree in Engineering Physics and a third MA degree in Plasma Physics, along with a PhD in Plasma Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His dissertation work focused on diagnosing the Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) device for near term applications. He holds a record for most publications from a single dissertation in the field of Nuclear Engineering, specifically IEC fusion. Gaining experience in the Periodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere concept on the Intense Electron Source-e device at Los Alamos National lab, he designed a carbon nanotube-based compact space probe for Oort cloud exploration for which he received a distinguished student performance award.  

Dr. Abdelmoula Haboub joined our scientific team as a Senior Research Scientist in September 2009. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and graduated from Cadi Ayyad, School of Science Semlalia, Marrakech, Morocco, and holds Master of Science degrees in Physics, Mechanical Engineering and Atmospheric Science. He earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Nevada.

His research interests include the development of optical and laser probing, as well as imaging techniques. He developed and built a unique laser which can record the fringes of high-density plasmas, allowing the precise measurement of the density. He has published over 13 scientific papers. His experience in working with the z-pinch machine, which produces dense plasma like the DPF, and his knowledge of the instrumentation needed for such dense plasma is particularly valuable on our project.

Vice Presidents

Robert Steinke joined LPP in December 2003 and writes most of the explanations of the science of Focus Fusion to make them comprehensible to a general audience.  He received his B.S. in 1995 and M.S. in 1997 in Computer Science from U.C. Santa Barbara, and his Ph.D. in 2001 in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His technical interests are in the areas of distributed computing and breakthrough technologies that will have a drastic positive effect on the long term well being of humanity such as fusion power. He is also President of SpeedUp, a personal rocketcraft company. He currently lives with his wife Mollie in Laramie, WY, with their daughters Adelaide and Nora, and son Paul.

Aaron Blake joined LPP in February 2005 and maintains this web site. He proposed the idea of injecting angular momentum into the plasma filaments, which was written into the patent. He received his B.A. in Social Work from Boise State University in 1999 and his MBA in 2005 from Touro University International.  He works for the US Air Force in Florida.

Simulation team (subcontactors)

Dr. David V. Rose is research physicist with Voss Scientific, LLC, a small company actively engaged in research for government and industry.  Dr. Rose specializes in numerical and analytic modeling of fundamental problems in plasma physics as well as specific applications including inertial confinement fusion, charged particle transport, laser-matter interactions, magnetically insulated transmission lines, and pulsed power systems.  He received a B.A. degree in Physics from Temple University, a M.S. degree in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Computational Physics from George Mason University.

Dr. John Guillory is Professor Emeritus in the School of Computational Sciences at George Mason University. He has been active in plasma physics research for over thirty years, with extensive work in collective and quantum effects or electron and ion beams in plasmas.  Dr. Guillory received a B.A. in Physics at Rice University (Phi Beta Kappa, honors) and a Ph.D. in Physics at University of California, Berkeley.