Prof. Volker Springel received his PhD in Astrophysics from the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich in 1999. He went on to be a Post-doc at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and subsequently at the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, where he became a tenured research group leader in 2005. He was appointed Prof. of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Heidelberg in 2010, where her also became group leader for Theoretical Astrophysics at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies and member of the Interdisciplinary Center of Scientific Computing in Heidelberg. Since 2017 Prof. Springel is Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, and since 2019 he is Honorary Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. He also serves as Vice President of the German Astronomical Society, as Member of the Cosmological Simulation Working Group (CSWG) of the EUCLID satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) and as member of the Research Board of the ORIGINS Cluster of Excellence. From 2017-2023 he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the Gauß-Center for Supercomputing (GCS) and from 2019-2022 he was member of the Steering Committee of the Max-Planck Princeton Center for Plasmaphysics. in 2016 Prof. Springel was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and in 2020 he became an International Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2021 he won the Leibniz Award of the DFG.
Dr. Richard Kembleton has been working in fusion physics for over 20 years, starting with a PhD in fusion materials at Cambridge University. He then joined UKAEA (UK Atomic Energy Authority) where he was a member of the Power Plant Technology Group and worked on DEMO, power plant designs, and fusion economics. Dr. Kembleton joined EUROfusion in Garching in 2018 to manage the Prospective R&D programme aimed at realising technology for commercialisation, and then joined Gauss Fusion in 2023 where he now acts as the CSO. --- Dr. Samuel Lazerson has a B.S. in Engineering Physics from Emby-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach Florida, and a Ph.D. in Space Physics from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He has worked on stellarator physics for 15 years as a researcher at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald. He's conducted research on the Large Helical Device, HSX, CNT, DIII-D, NSTX, ITER, and W7-X. In May of last year Samuel joined Gauss Fusion as the stellarator physics lead.
Friedrich Wagner was born on 16 November 1943 in Pfaffenhofen (Swabia). After studying physics and taking his PhD at the Technical University of Munich in 1972, Wagner then went as a postdoc to Ohio State University, where he did research in the field of low-temperature physics from 1973 to 1974. In 1975 he joined Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, being made head of the ASDEX tokamak experiment in 1986 and appointed Scientific Fellow in 1988. Wagner qualified for lectureship in the same year at the University of Heidelberg, where he held a teaching post till 1991. That year he became Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich. From 1989 till 1993 he has been project head of the Wendelstein 7-AS stellarator experiment. From 1993 to 2005 he was member of the Directorate of IPP, from March 1999 till April 2007 Speaker of the Greifswald Branch Institute and from 2003 till 2005 head of the "Wendelstein 7-X Enterprise". In 1987 he was awarded the "Excellency in Plasma Physics" prize by the Plasma Physics Division of the American Physical Society, in 2007 the Hannes Alfvén Prize of the European Physical Society. In 2008 he has been awarded the Stern-Gerlach Medal 2009 by the German Physical Society. Since 1999 he is Ordinary Professor at the Ernst-Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald. Besides his institute commitments, Wagner was from 1996 till 2004 Chairman of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society, from 2007 till 2009 he was President of the European Physical Society. Wagner is Honorary Member of the Ioffe Institute, St. Petersburg, Fellow of the Institute of Physics of the American Physical Society, and Member of the Editorial Board at the Institute of Physics. He retired end of 2008.
