Location
6109 ERB I
Biography
Additional Title
- Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Louise Willingale received her PhD in Plasma Physics at the Imperial College, London, and joined the University of Michigan Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences in 2008 as a Postdoctoral Researcher, and in 2011 as an Assistant Research Scientist. In 2014, she joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as an Assistant Professor and became an Associate Professor with tenure in 2022. She received an NSF CAREER Award for research in magnetic reconnection in plasmas, was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2022 and is a Kavli Fellow.
Research Interests
Louise Willingale conducts research in intense laser-plasma interactions including laser-driven ion acceleration, relativistic laser propagation through underdense and near-critical density plasmas, and proton deflectometry to study electric and magnetic fields generated during the laser-plasma interactions.
Louise is affiliated with the High Field Science group in the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS) and is a member of MIPSE. She is the Associate Director for the NSF-funded laser facility ZEUS. External facilities are also used to perform experiments including the OMEGA EP facility, at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the Jupiter laser facility at the LLNL, and the VULCAN laser in the UK.
Plasmas & Nuclear Fusion
Honors and Awards
- 2022 Fellow, American Physics Society
- 2022 Kavli Fellow
- 2018 NSF CAREER Award: Relativistic electron driven magnetic reconnection
- 2012 Outstanding poster, 2012 SSAA Symposium, National Laser Users’ Facility
- 2009 John Dawson Thesis Prize (Worldwide)
- 2008 European Physical Society–Plasma Physics Division PhD Research Award
- 2008 Culham Thesis Prize (UK & Ireland)–for significant experimental and numerical work on the acceleration of ions to high energies by laser-plasma interaction