Josefine Proll

Josefine Proll is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Since secondary school, she has been passionate about solving the worlds energy problem. On learning about nuclear fusion and its potential to solve exactly that problem Josefine decided she wanted to work on making nuclear fusion a reality. One of the main issues in fusion research is to keep the heat within–necessarily very hot–fusion plasmas. Various transport phenomena are observed which lead to a loss of heat, and turbulence is currently considered the main problem in fusion devices of the tokamak type (such as the the big experiment ITER currently under construction in southern France) as well as their twisted siblings, stellarators.  

Josefine’s research looks into which instabilities drive turbulence, how they interact with each other and how they saturate. Her theory has predicted, for example, that a certain type of instability cannot exist, if the magnetic cage of the stellarator is shaped in a clever way – as is actually the case in the newly built German stellarator experiment Wendelstein 7-X. Josefine collaborates with the experimentalists there to test her theory, which, if confirmed, leads to the conclusion that clever shaping can reduce levels of turbulence. Ultimately, she aims to incorporate this knowledge into optimisation schemes, to find the perfect shape for the next generation – possibly net energy generating – stellarator.

Knowing that I’m working on nuclear fusion – a technology that can solve the worlds energy problem – is something that motivates me every day.