Jhovanna Garcia's General Atomics Collaboration

I connected with Deputy Director David Pace from DIII-D at GA last year to learn more about pathways through the fusion industry with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.  Now, we're working together to get a presence from this national lab to SDSU! We're planning on holding a seminar with engineers and scientists from the fusion facility (DIII-D) on April 27th. I've connected him with Dr. Shaffar to bridge our engineering program, via our Senior Design Capstone, to DIII-D projects as well. 

I think David may have mentioned the recent DOE highlight (hyperlinked here) from a paper I co-authored with PPPL about a year ago -- maybe this got interpreted as research I did with GA. I'm also a Student Stem Ambassador with PPPL, so I'm often "putting SDSU on the map" so to speak on LinkedIn.  Additionally, I'll have my first, small, presentation to the Women in Physics later today on the topic of nuclear fusion and my project at PPPL.

On that note, I included a picture of me and the DOE Office of Science Director, Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, who visited PPPL a few weeks ago. I was flown out to meet her and talk to her about my outreach. I'll be meeting her again (virtually) on March 15th when she visits the Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). That week, I will be at PPPL to help out with an experiment and be a panelist for a Young Women's Conference in STEM. Up on the horizon and in the works, is the possibility of going to Washington D.C. during spring break for something called Fusion Day, an annual event where scientists and students advocate for fusion and plasma physics research to congressional representatives. I'm not sure how this all snowballed, but I'm excited for what's ahead!