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DOE Physicists at
Work
Profiles of
representative DOE-sponsored physicists
doing
research at universities and national
laboratories
Compiled by the Office of Scientific and
Technical Information
Dr. David Newman
David Newman knew he wanted to be a
scientist from a young age, when he thought that
looking at the stars was very cool. "However,
after being given a telescope as a birthday present, I
quickly discovered that experimental astrophysics,
while being very cool...was in fact too cold (and
required staying up too late!)," says Dr. Newman,
Professor of Physics at the University
of Alaska-Fairbanks.
So he decided that theoretical
physics was more to his liking. "In fairness,
this probably also had something to do with that fact
that my father, Prof. Ted Newman, is a mathematical
physicist who studies General
Relativity," says Dr. Newman, who notes that it
was during summers as a raft guide in Colorado, that he
developed a love for turbulence
and nonlinear
complex systems, "which ended up being the area of
physics that chose me."
David Newman was born and raised in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he attended Taylor
Allderdice High School. After receiving his BS in
Physics and Mathematics in 1983 from the University of
Pittsburgh, David married Uma Bhatt, who is now a
Professor
of Atmospheric Sciences at UAF. The couple spent
the following two-and-a-half years serving as U.S. Peace
Corps volunteers in Kenya at an altitude of 3000 meters.
"To paraphrase the old Peace
Corps slogan, 'it was the toughest honeymoon you'll ever
love,'" says Dr. Newman. "I loved the
challenges and joys of teaching, building a water tank,
and starting a tree nursery and library. Teaching
physics in a rural developing country was a great
experience; the students were wonderful, bright and
hardworking."
After returning, he attended
graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
where he received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1993. Dr.
Newman joined Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (1993) as a Wigner
Fellow and subsequently became a staff member in the
Theory
section of the Fusion
Energy Division. At ORNL he worked on
turbulence and turbulent transport
in plasmas and was
awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for
Scientists and Engineers. Largely because he
missed teaching, he joined the physics faculty at the
University of Alaska in 1998. In addition to
engaging in an active research program, he teaches
classes from introductory undergraduate level up to
advanced graduate classes.
Since 1987, Dr. Newman has had the
pleasure of giving science outreach/education
presentations to all levels of audiences, from
kindergarten to Elderhostels, including a number of
teacher training sessions. "There are few
things as rewarding as seeing the smiling faces of kids
(or adults) learning, and hearing the oohs, ahhs and
ah-ha moments which tell you a love for science is
developing," says Dr. Newman.
His love for complex systems,
nonlinear dynamics and turbulence, combined with the
urgent need for new energy sources stimulated by the
Peace Corps experience in Kenya, made plasma physics and
fusion an appealing topic to study in graduate
school. "Plasmas can serve as the most
incredible example of a highly nonlinear system that
largely obeys, and can be used as a test bed for,
classical complex dynamics," says Dr. Newman.
"They have the benefit of exhibiting both really
beautiful fundamental complex behaviors that have
implications for our understanding of the universe as
well as the practical goal of enabling controlled
nuclear fusion as an almost limitless energy source here
on earth."
When he has time to relax, Dr.
Newman enjoys reading, hiking, skiing, and working
around the house. He lives in Fairbanks with his
wife, 2 dogs (Kodiak & Oook,) and hopes that an
adopted child will be joining them soon.
"Here," says Dr. Newman, "we enjoy the
beauty of physics of an unusual environment - where you
can watch soap bubbles freeze, listen to a cup of hot
water snap, crackle and pop when tossed into the air and
observe a green
flash and an Aurora
within hours of each other."
Dr. David
Newman's
articles accessed via OSTI:
Information
Bridge
Initial
Evidence for Self-Organized Criticality in Electric
Power System Blackouts
Sandpile
dynamics as a paradigm for turbulent transport
The
dynamics of marginality and self-organized
criticality as a paradigm for turbulent transport
Dynamics
of the L à
H transition, VH-mode evolution, edge localized
modes and R.F. driven confinement control in
tokamaks
Parallel
plasma fluid turbulence calculations
The
dynamics of interacting nonlinearities governing
long wavelength driftwave turbulence
Chaos
in plasma simulation and experiment
Energy
Citations Database
Quiet-time
statistics of electrostatic turbulent fluxes from the
JET tokamak and the W7-AS and TJ-II stellarators
Local
particle flux reversal under strongly sheared flow
Quiet-time
statistics: A tool to probe the dynamics of
self-organized-criticality systems from within the
strong overlapping regime
Avalanche
structure in a running sandpile model
A
self-organized critical transport model based on
critical-gradient fluctuation dynamics
Waiting-time
statistics of self-organized-criticality systems
Intermittency
of plasma edge fluctuation data: Multifractal analysis
Anomalous
diffusion in a running sandpile model
Experimental
evidence of long-range correlations and
self-similarity in plasma fluctuations
Fluctuation
level bursts in a model of internal transport barrier
formation
Long-range
time dependence in the cross-correlation function
Self-similarity
of the plasma edge fluctuations
Long-Range
Time Correlations in Plasma Edge Turbulence
Dynamics
and control of internal transport barriers in reversed
shear discharges
Resistive
pressure gradient-driven turbulence at stellarator
plasma edge
Fluctuation-induced
flux at the plasma edge in toroidal devices
The
dynamics of marginality and self-organized criticality
as a paradigm for turbulent transport
Energy
partitions in saturated compressible electron
magnetoturbulence
Dynamics
of spatiotemporally propagating transport barriers
The
effect of an external torque on low to high
confinement transitions
Relaxation
oscillations induced by amplitude-dependent frequency
in dissipative trapped electron mode turbulence
Effects
of nonlinear electron dynamics in a fluid model of
collisionless trapped-electron mode turbulence
The
dynamics of long wavelength electrostatic turbulence
in tokamaks
Chaos
in reversed-field-pinch plasma simulation and
experiment
The
dynamics of interacting nonlinearities governing long
wavelength drift wave turbulence
Nonconservative
and reverse spectral transfer in Hasegawa--Mima
turbulence
A
two-nonlinearity model of dissipative drift wave
turbulence
The
dynamics of spectral transfer in a model of drift wave
turbulence with two nonlinearities
Nonconservative
and reverse spectral transfer in Hasegawa-Mima
turbulence
The
dynamics of interacting nonlinearities governing long
wavelength drift wave turbulence. Ph.D. Thesis
Energy
transfer dynamics of dissipative trapped ion
convective cell turbulence
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