Fusion Power Associates (FPA) has selected Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Distinguished R&D Staff Researcher John Canik as one of the recipients of the FPA 2021 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Awards. FPA, founded in 1979, aims to ensure the timely development and acceptance of fusion as an attractive source of energy.
According to the official announcement, Canik is being “recognized for his pioneering contributions to understanding transport-optimized stellarators, mechanisms that control edge processes in tokamaks, and divertor detachment modeling, as well as for the outstanding leadership [he] has been providing to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory fusion program, noting that his research is recognized internationally and continues to have a major impact on the direction of fusion research worldwide.”
Canik—who is sharing the award with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Tammy Ma—will be honored at FPA’s 32nd annual meeting, which is scheduled to take place on December 15-16 in Washington, D.C.
FPA Excellence in Fusion Engineering Awards have been given annually since 1987, in memory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor David J. Rose, to recognize persons in the relatively early part of their careers who have shown both technical accomplishment and potential to become exceptionally influential leaders in the fusion field.
Career with a mission
Canik joined ORNL in 2007 as an experimental plasma physics scientists after earning his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. In that role, he has worked on simulating the transport of heat and particles in the edge of fusion plasma experiments and their interactions with surrounding surfaces, as well as studying the effects of three-dimensional magnetic perturbations on the edge transport and stability properties of tokamaks.
He also served as group leader for the Theory and Modeling Group between 2014 and 2019, and more recently as interim director for the Fusion Energy Division.
Canik has coauthored over 100 scientific papers, but he’s most excited about the greater mission that comes with the job.
“I am incredibly excited to witness the renewed focus of the fusion community on the urgent goal of reaching a fusion pilot plant,” he said. “To me, this is a job with purpose.”
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science
