Dr. Tammy Ma is the lead for the Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) Initiative at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She was a member of the team at the National Ignition Facility that achieved fusion ignition in December 2022 — an experiment that, for the first time in history, generated more energy from fusion than the energy it consumed. Tammy serves on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, where she helped author a long-range plan for U.S. efforts in fusion and chaired the 2022 IFE Basic Research Needs study. She has authored or co-authored over 200 journal publications, and is the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, a DOE Early Career Research Award, was previously a Young Scientist of the World Economic Forum, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Tammy has written for Scientific American, has been featured on 60 Minutes, and in 2024 delivered a TED talk on the potential of fusion energy.