11/10/24 @ 9:00 am
Abstract: Nuclear fusion offers an abundant long-term energy source that can meet the future energy demands of the world and mitigate the threat of global warming. The United States, the European Community, China, and Japan are investing heavily in research and development efforts to accelerate bringing fusion energy to the grid. In this presentation, I will explain how nuclear fusion works and how fusion energy is generated, how fusion scientists and engineers are trying to capture that energy and convert it to electricity, the challenges facing the research and development efforts at the present time, and when the experts think we might have fusion energy on the grid.
Speaker: Anter El-Azab is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Purdue University, and is a leading academic scholar in various aspects of materials modeling. He obtained his doctorate degree in Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, performing research in Applied Plasma Physics and Fusion Engineering. Prior to coming to Purdue, he worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a research scientist, and was a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computational Science at Florida State University. He teaches materials science at Purdue University and conducts research on the strength and durability of materials under various service conditions including fusion.