Current group members
David Maurer
Professor of Physics
Professor Maurer is PI of the Auburn W7-X collaboration and is involved with the X-ray imaging crystal spectrometer project. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and was an adjunct faculty before joining the faculty at Auburn University. Professor Maurer also leads the Compact Toroidal Hybrid research program located on the Auburn campus.
David Ennis
Associate Professor of Physics
Professor Ennis is a Co-PI of the Auburn W7-X collaboration and is primarily involved with the coherence imaging spectroscopy project. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison followed by a postdoc at the University of Washington before joining the faculty at Auburn University. Professor Ennis also leads a collaboration between Auburn University and the DIII-D tokamak experiment and is also associated with the Compact Toroidal Hybrid experiment located on the Auburn campus.
Matt Kriete
Assistant Research Professor
Matt works on-site at W7-X in Greifswald, Germany investigating edge plasma physics. He is primarily involved with the coherence imaging spectroscopy project, and has contributed to many investigations into the phsyics of the W7-X island divertor. Matt received his bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech (Go Hokies!) before attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison to pursue his passion for fusion energy. In the course of his PhD studies, Matt traveled from coast to coast working on the Pegasus, NSTX-U, and DIII-D tokamaks.
Tomie Gonda
Graduate Student
Tomie is a graduate student studying impurity transport in W7-X using the X-ray imaging crystal spectrometer and the STRAHL radial transport code. Tomie received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota, Morris and worked at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory before enrolling at Auburn to work on fusion research.
Alumni
Peter Traverso
Graduate Student
Peter received his Ph.D. in 2021 for investigations of impurity transport in W7-X using measurements from the X-ray imaging crystal spectrometer combined with predictions from the STRAHL radial transport code. Peter is currently an ORISE postdoctoral fellow at General Atomics.
John Schmitt
Assistant Research Professor
Professor Schmitt was a Co-PI of the Auburn W7-X collaboration and worked on 3-D equilibrium reconstructions and numerical stellarator optimization. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison working on the HSX stellarator followed by a postdoc at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory before joining the Auburn faculty. John is now a scientist at Type One Energy. John also volunteers as a seasonal Snow Engineer.