UC Merced physics graduate student Sameen Yunus has been awarded a prestigious fellowship allowing her to spend the next three years working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, conducting experiments and simulations that could lead to faster fusion ignition.
The UC-National Lab In-Residence Graduate Fellowship is designed to help graduate students complete their theses. Yunus, a third-year Ph.D. candidate, will work on experiments that complement her computational work in Professor David Strubbe’s lab.
Hers is one of only seven fellowships awarded this year across the UC system.
“It made my month, really,” Yunus said. “I was hoping this would work out. It's a big honor, and I just hope I can do it justice.”
Broadly speaking, Yunus studies the plasma conditions relevant to fusion and stellar planetary interiors.
Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) is one of the top physics research centers worldwide. One of its main specialties is high-energy-density science, an interdisciplinary study of physical changes in matter and radiation at extreme temperatures, pressures, and densities that helps explain how stars form, how elements are made, and how fusion energy can be harnessed on Earth.
LLNL also boasts the National Ignition Facility, which can achieve the highest temperatures and pressures of any facility in the world and where experiments can provide unprecedented insights into high-energy-density physics.
At the national lab, Yunus works on electron fast ignition — a technique that uses long-pulse lasers to compress nuclear fuel, followed by a short-pulse laser that generates a bath of energetic electrons to deposit energy into the compressed fuel, raising the temperature and initiating the fusion process. Her focus is on the electron generation and energy deposition phase.
Extensive experience in computational and experimental physics is important for her work at LLNL and for her career goal of being a research scientist at a national lab.
“High-energy density physics, especially, lends itself to both, because the experiments are so difficult you really have to rely on the computations,” she said.
Yunus began working at LLNL last fall. While she will still have her faculty advisor on campus, she also has a mentor, Ronnie Shepherd, at the lab who oversees her experiments and helps monitor her progress toward completing her thesis research.
Strubbe, chemistry Professor Aurora Pribram-Jones and Shepherd co-lead the Consortium for High Energy Density Science , which was formed in 2018 with LLNL, Florida A&M University and Morehouse College. The consortium aims to create and sustain a workforce pipeline to national labs by increasing the number of students interested in science, developing new scientists, and building improved scientific educational and research capacity.
Yunus said this fellowship wouldn't have been possible without Strubbe's partnerships and collaborations with his colleagues and the national labs.
“Collaborations with LLNL offer faculty and students the ability to access some unique scientific facilities and the deep expertise of the staff, particularly regarding fusion, making research on this topic possible,” Strubbe said. “Connections with LLNL are also valuable opportunities for students to learn about the lab as a potential career path. And it is only a 90-minute drive from Merced.”
Strubbe said Yunus has been highly motivated and successful in her work despite a setback that required her to wait a year before starting the program.
“She has taken charge of finding opportunities at the lab and making connections with collaborators,” he said. “She has been a valuable member of my research group and the Department of Physics .”
In addition to her other service projects, she volunteered to help organize the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics on campus.
Yunus said that as a woman of color, she is keenly aware of the barriers others face in getting into science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and is “particularly motivated to address the limited access to high energy density science research, which remains largely inaccessible to many.”
