Saint Michael’s College associate professor of physics, Dr. Alain Brizard, learned this month that he will be the recipient of a grant from the Department of Energy for $33,000 each of the next three years to support his research. The funding comes from the DOE’s office of Fusion Energy Sciences of the Office of Science.
His research, titled, “Hamiltonian Formulations and Momentum Conservation Laws of Reduced Plasma Models,” was selected on the basis of peer review of “scientific/technical merit and broader impact,” wrote the Acting Director of the Research Division of Fusion Energy Sciences, Office of Science, in granting the award.
“The new grant allows me to continue a series of federal grants from DoE and NSF while at Saint Michael’s,” Professor Brizard said. “These grants allow me to do research with other scientists nationally and internationally while teaching at a small liberal-arts institution, where I can provide expert guidance to Saint Michael’s undergraduate physics majors—I find this a very fulfilling combination of work.”
Dr. Brizard’s work will include collaborations with the Institute of Fusion Studies at The University of Texas at Austin as well as the Centre de Physique Théorique of the University of Aix-Marseille (France).
This theoretical work will be carried out by Brizard with “pen and paper” at Saint Michael’s College, as well as on occasional summer visits to Marseille. The models developed by Brizard and his collaborators “will be used in computer codes in support of the experimental development of thermonuclear fusion energy as a safe source of energy for future generations,” Dr. Brizard said.
Dr. Brizard, an elected member of the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering, has been at Saint Michael’s for ten years, where he teaches astronomy, meteorology, physics, classical mechanics and other physics courses. His research interests include space, fusion and astrophysical plasma physics, astrophysics and cosmology (theoretical physics).
Alain Brizard is the author of numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles and three textbooks: An Introduction to Lagrangian Mechanics; co-author of Modern Eikonal Methods: Theory and Applications in Plasma Physics (Cambridge University Press), expected publication date: 2011, and Lecture Notes on Gyrokinetic Theory (World Scientific Publishing Co.), expected publication date: early 2012.
