Mario Manuel

Inertial Fusion Technologies (IFT) division

General Atomics

Dr. Mario Manuel is a staff scientist in the Inertial Fusion Technologies (IFT) division of the Energy Group at General Atomics (GA). Mario is the Director of the Target Injector Nexus (TINEX) FIRE Collaborative which includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of California San Diego, and Colorado State University. TINEX addresses technology gaps in many aspects of the IFE target life cycle: characterizing wetted-foam capsules during production, injecting the fragile targets at 50 m/s, tracking them with radiation-hardened diagnostics, addressing environmental effects on the wetted-foam layer, and developing control algorithms to engage the target with a high-power laser. In addition to the TINEX project, Mario is the Director of the GA Laboratory for Developing Rep-rated Instrumentation for Experiments with Lasers (GALADRIEL), a facility built to provide a platform for users from academia, national labs, and industry to test and prototype new diagnostics, targetry, machine-learning-based control algorithms, and artificial-intelligence-enhanced data management for high-shot-rate (>0.1Hz) HED experiments.

Mario earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the study of Biermann Battery magnetic fields driven by the ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability in laser-produced plasmas and the development of monoenergetic proton radiography used to characterize magnetic fields in high-energy-density (HED) plasmas. For his pioneering Ph.D. work, Mario received the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Plasma Physics (DPP). Mario extended his research into laboratory astrophysics as a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan where he studied the effects of background magnetic fields on collimated plasma jets. At GA, Mario continues his research of magnetic field generation and effects in HED plasmas as a site-lead for the Center for Matter under Extreme Conditions (CMEC), an NNSA Center of Excellence.

While conducting and managing multiple research projects, Mario is an active member within the plasma physics community through involvement as a member of the executive committees for LaserNetUS, the NIF User Group, the Omega Laser User Group, and he has participated in multiple basic research needs groups for the Department of Energy to help direct research needs in plasma physics and inertial fusion energy.