Reported by: YUE Peng & LENG Xuesong
Translated by: MIAO Siwei
Edited by: CAI Zhen
Updated: 2011-12-16
December 1st, 2011, HIT Space Basic Science Research Center had a video conference with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) on the space plasma collaboration. HIT Vice President GUO Bin, Professor WANG Xiaogang, YUE Peng and LENG Xuesong from Special Office represented HIT at the conference; PPPL Director Stewart Prager and Principal Research Physicist JI Hongtao were on behalf of Princeton University. After the talk, two sides signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and co-operation agreement, aiming to work together on lab construction, talent training and academic exchanges. As a basis of substantive scientific research between two universities, this MOU and co- operation agreement have great significance in enhancing HIT’s capacity to conduct the scientific research on space plasma.
At the conference, President GUO firstly put forward some space plasma basic scientific issues HIT planned to embark on, such as magnetic-disturbed radiation belt plasma, energetic particles acceleration and capture, ring current driving as well as the basic physical processes related with them like magnetic reconnection, turbulence, and dusty plasma. To complement other research installations, President Guo welcomed advice and experience from world renowned space plasma research institutions in the process of constructing surface installation.
Appreciating HIT’s research plan, Mr Prager, an internationally recognized leader in the field of fusion energy research, remarked that PPPL had a sixty-year research experience in plasma basic theories, while HIT had superiority in material science, equipment manufacturing and space technology. He also hoped that HIT and Princeton could establish a long-term and substantive co-operation.
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), the United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science, now managed by Princeton University, initially was founded by Lyman Spitzer,Jr., an American theoretical physicist and astronomer in 1951. The Lab comprises ninety physicists, eighty engineers, one hundred and seventy technicians and one hundred other staff members. Each year Princeton will allocate eight percent of its entire funds to PPPL. Stewart Prager, the chair of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society (APS), was appointed as the director of the U.S. DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in 2008. He served as a member of the fusion review panel of President Clinton's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology and the director of the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST) experiment at the University of Wisconsin.
