CONNECT Committee Members
Oak Nelson (Chair)
Affiliation: Columbia University
Position: Associate Research Scientist
Bio: Oak is a young plasma researcher currently a postdoc at Columbia. He completed his PhD work at Princeton University. He hopes to continue fusion research after graduate school with a focus on teaching and education. Oak was the chair of the Princeton Plasma graduate student committee and is engaged in several diversity and outreach programs, working actively to combat the gender- and race-related inequalities in our field and to make fusion and plasma research accessible to all.
Kyle Callahan (Vice Chair)
Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles
Position: Graduate Student
Bio: Kyle is a soon to graduate PhD student at UCLA. He received his B.S. degree from UC-Irvine in 2019 and is completing his PhD thesis work at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in La Jolla, CA. He has helped lead several outreach and education projects, which include facilitating free tutoring to K-12 students in Southeast LA by UCLA graduate students and co-organizing the annual APS DPP 2023 Student Day. He hopes to continue helping with initiatives to combat gender and race-based inequalities in plasma and fusion science, and make the field more inclusive for all. Outside of the lab, he enjoys running, swimming, surfing, and rock climbing.
Magnus A. Haw (Past Chair)
Affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center
Position: Research Scientist
Bio: Dr. Magnus Haw is currently a staff scientist in the Thermophysics branch at NASA Ames Research Center where he specializes in experimental low-temperature plasma physics and plasma material interactions. For his undergraduate education Dr. Haw received a B.Sc. in physics from the University of British Columbia. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Caltech in 2018 for work on experimental and numerical studies of cavities, flows, and waves in arched flux ropes in the Bellan group. Currently his work includes studies of MHD instabilities in arcjet plasmas, plasma-surface interactions and development of new heatshield diagnostics for atmospheric re-entry.