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    High energy and hungry for the hardest problems

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    A high school track star and valedictorian, Anne White has always relished moving fast and clearing high hurdles. Since joining the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) in 2009 she has produced path-breaking fusion research, helped attract a more diverse cohort of students and scholars into the discipline, and, during a worldwide pandemic, assumed the role of department head as well as co-lead of an Institute-wide initiative to address climate change. For her exceptional leadership, innovation, and accomplishments in education and research, White was named the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering in July 2020.

    But White declares little interest in recognition or promotions. “I don’t care about all that stuff,” she says. She’s in the race for much bigger stakes. “I want to find ways to save the world with nuclear,” she says.

    Tackling turbulence

    It was this goal that drew White to MIT. Her research, honed during graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, involved developing a detailed understanding of conditions inside fusion devices, and resolving issues critical to realizing the vision of fusion energy — a carbon-free, nearly limitless source of power generated by 150-million-degree plasma.

    Harnessing this superheated, gaseous form of matter requires a special donut-shaped device called a tokamak, which contains the plasma within magnetic fields. When White entered fusion around the turn of the millennium, models of plasma behavior in tokamaks didn’t reliably match observed or experimental conditions. She was determined to change that picture, working with MIT’s state-of-the-art research tokamak, Alcator C-Mod.

    Play video

    Alcator C-Mod Tokamak Tour

    White believed solving the fusion puzzle meant getting a handle on plasma turbulence — the process by which charged atomic particles, breaking out of magnetic confinement, transport heat from the core to the cool edges of the tokamak. Although researchers knew that fusion energy depends on containing and controlling the heat of plasma reactions, White recalls that when she began grad school, “it was not widely accepted that turbulence was important, and that it was central to heat transport. She “felt it was critical to compare experimental measurements to first principles physics models, so we could demonstrate the significance of turbulence and give tokamak models better predictive ability.”

    In a series of groundbreaking studies, White’s team created the tools for measuring turbulence in different conditions, and developed computational models that could account for variations in turbulence, all validated by experiments. She was one of the first fusion scientists both to perform experiments and conduct simulations. “We lived in the domain between these two worlds,” she says.

    White’s turbulence models opened up approaches for managing turbulence and maximizing tokamak performance, paving the way for net-energy fusion energy devices, including ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and SPARC, a compact, high-magnetic-field tokamak, a collaboration between MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

    Laser-focused on turbulence

    Growing up in the desert city of Yuma, Arizona, White spent her free time outdoors, hiking and camping. “I was always in the space of protecting the environment,” she says. The daughter of two lawyers who taught her “to argue quickly and efficiently,” she excelled in math and physics in high school. Awarded a full ride at the University of Arizona, she was intent on a path in science, one where she could tackle problems like global warming, as it was known then. Physics seemed like the natural concentration for her.

    But there was unexpected pushback. The physics advisor believed her physics grades were lackluster. “I said, ‘Who cares what this guy thinks; I’ll take physics classes anyway,’” recalls White. Being tenacious and “thick skinned,” says White, turned out to be life-altering. “I took nuclear physics, which opened my eyes to fission, which then set me off on a path of understanding nuclear power and advanced nuclear systems,” she says. Math classes introduced her to chaotic systems, and she decided she wanted to study turbulence. Then, at a Society of Physics Students meeting White says she attended for the free food, she learned about fusion.

    “I realized this was what I wanted to do,” says White. “I became totally laser focused on turbulence and tokamaks.”

    At UCLA, she began to develop instruments and methods for measuring and modeling plasma turbulence, working on three different fusion research reactors, and earning fellowships from the Department of Energy (DOE) during her graduate and post-graduate years in fusion energy science. At MIT, she received a DOE Early Career Award that enabled her to build a research team that she now considers her “legacy.”

    As she expanded her research portfolio, White was also intent on incorporating fusion into the NSE curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level, and more broadly, on making NSE a destination for students concerned about climate change. In recognition of her efforts, she received the 2014 Junior Bose Teaching Award. She also helped design the EdX course, Nuclear Engineering: Science, Systems and Society, introducing thousands of online learners to the potential of the field. “I have to be in the classroom,” she says. “I have to be with students, interacting, and sharing knowledge and lines of inquiry with them.”

    But even as she deepened her engagement with teaching and with her fusion research, which was helping spur development of new fusion energy technologies, White could not resist leaping into a consequential new undertaking: chairing the department. “It sounds cheesy, but I did it for my kid,” she says. “I can be helpful working on fusion, but I thought, what if I can help more by enabling other people across all areas of nuclear? This department gave me so much, I wanted to give back.”

    Although the pandemic struck just months after she stepped into the role in 2019, White propelled the department toward a new strategic plan. “It captures all the urgency and passion of the faculty, and is attractive to new students, with more undergraduates enrolling and more graduate students applying,” she says. White sees the department advancing the broader goals of the field, “articulating why nuclear is fundamentally important across many dimensions for carbon-free electricity and generation.” This means getting students involved in advanced fission technologies such as nuclear batteries and small modular reactors, as well as giving them an education in fusion that will help catalyze a nascent energy industry.

    Restless for a challenge

    White feels she’s still growing into the leadership role. “I’m really enthusiastic and sometimes too intense for people, so I have to dial it back during challenging conversations,” she says. She recently completed a Harvard Business School course on leadership.

    As the recently named co-chair of MIT’s Climate Nucleus (along with Professor Noelle Selin), charged with overseeing MIT’s campus initiatives around climate change, White says she draws on a repertoire of skills that come naturally to her: listening carefully, building consensus, and seeing value in the diversity of opinion. She is optimistic about mobilizing the Institute around goals to lower MIT’s carbon footprint, “using the entire campus as a research lab,” she says.

    In the midst of this push, White continues to advance projects of concern to her, such as making nuclear physics education more accessible. She developed an in-class module involving a simple particle detector for measuring background radiation. “Any high school or university student could build this experiment in 10 minutes and see alpha particle clusters and muons,” she says.

    White is also planning to host “Rising Stars,” an international conference intended to help underrepresented groups break barriers to entry in the field of nuclear science and engineering. “Grand intellectual challenges like saving the world appeal to all genders and backgrounds,” she says.

    These projects, her departmental and institutional duties, and most recently a new job chairing DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee leave her precious little time for a life outside work. But she makes time for walks and backpacking with her husband and toddler son, and reading the latest books by female faculty colleagues, such as “The New Breed,” by Media Lab robotics researcher Kate Darling, and “When People Want Punishment,” by Lily Tsai, Ford Professor of Political Science. “There are so many things I don’t know and want to understand,” says White.

    Yet even at leisure, White doesn’t slow down. “It’s restlessness: I love to learn, and anytime someone says a problem is hard, or impossible, I want to tackle it,” she says. There’s no time off, she believes, when the goal is “solving climate change and amplifying the work of other people trying to solve it.” More

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      in Environment

      High-energy and hungry for the hardest problems

      by

      A high school track star and valedictorian, Anne White has always relished moving fast and clearing high hurdles. Since joining the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) in 2009 she has produced path-breaking fusion research, helped attract a more diverse cohort of students and scholars into the discipline, and, during a worldwide pandemic, assumed the role of department head as well as co-lead of an Institute-wide initiative to address climate change. For her exceptional leadership, innovation, and accomplishments in education and research, White was named the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering in July 2020.

      But White declares little interest in recognition or promotions. “I don’t care about all that stuff,” she says. She’s in the race for much bigger stakes. “I want to find ways to save the world with nuclear,” she says.

      Tackling turbulence

      It was this goal that drew White to MIT. Her research, honed during graduate studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, involved developing a detailed understanding of conditions inside fusion devices, and resolving issues critical to realizing the vision of fusion energy — a carbon-free, nearly limitless source of power generated by 150-million-degree plasma.

      Harnessing this superheated, gaseous form of matter requires a special donut-shaped device called a tokamak, which contains the plasma within magnetic fields. When White entered fusion around the turn of the millennium, models of plasma behavior in tokamaks didn’t reliably match observed or experimental conditions. She was determined to change that picture, working with MIT’s state-of-the-art research tokamak, Alcator C-Mod.

      Play video

      Alcator C-Mod Tokamak Tour

      White believed solving the fusion puzzle meant getting a handle on plasma turbulence — the process by which charged atomic particles, breaking out of magnetic confinement, transport heat from the core to the cool edges of the tokamak. Although researchers knew that fusion energy depends on containing and controlling the heat of plasma reactions, White recalls that when she began grad school, “it was not widely accepted that turbulence was important, and that it was central to heat transport. She “felt it was critical to compare experimental measurements to first principles physics models, so we could demonstrate the significance of turbulence and give tokamak models better predictive ability.”

      In a series of groundbreaking studies, White’s team created the tools for measuring turbulence in different conditions, and developed computational models that could account for variations in turbulence, all validated by experiments. She was one of the first fusion scientists both to perform experiments and conduct simulations. “We lived in the domain between these two worlds,” she says.

      White’s turbulence models opened up approaches for managing turbulence and maximizing tokamak performance, paving the way for net-energy fusion energy devices, including ITER, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and SPARC, a compact, high-magnetic-field tokamak, a collaboration between MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

      Laser-focused on turbulence

      Growing up in the desert city of Yuma, Arizona, White spent her free time outdoors, hiking and camping. “I was always in the space of protecting the environment,” she says. The daughter of two lawyers who taught her “to argue quickly and efficiently,” she excelled in math and physics in high school. Awarded a full ride at the University of Arizona, she was intent on a path in science, one where she could tackle problems like global warming, as it was known then. Physics seemed like the natural concentration for her.

      But there was unexpected pushback. The physics advisor believed her physics grades were lackluster. “I said, ‘Who cares what this guy thinks; I’ll take physics classes anyway,’” recalls White. Being tenacious and “thick skinned,” says White, turned out to be life-altering. “I took nuclear physics, which opened my eyes to fission, which then set me off on a path of understanding nuclear power and advanced nuclear systems,” she says. Math classes introduced her to chaotic systems, and she decided she wanted to study turbulence. Then, at a Society of Physics Students meeting White says she attended for the free food, she learned about fusion.

      “I realized this was what I wanted to do,” says White. “I became totally laser focused on turbulence and tokamaks.”

      At UCLA, she began to develop instruments and methods for measuring and modeling plasma turbulence, working on three different fusion research reactors, and earning fellowships from the Department of Energy (DOE) during her graduate and post-graduate years in fusion energy science. At MIT, she received a DOE Early Career Award that enabled her to build a research team that she now considers her “legacy.”

      As she expanded her research portfolio, White was also intent on incorporating fusion into the NSE curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level, and more broadly, on making NSE a destination for students concerned about climate change. In recognition of her efforts, she received the 2014 Junior Bose Teaching Award. She also helped design the EdX course, Nuclear Engineering: Science, Systems and Society, introducing thousands of online learners to the potential of the field. “I have to be in the classroom,” she says. “I have to be with students, interacting, and sharing knowledge and lines of inquiry with them.”

      But even as she deepened her engagement with teaching and with her fusion research, which was helping spur development of new fusion energy technologies, White could not resist leaping into a consequential new undertaking: chairing the department. “It sounds cheesy, but I did it for my kid,” she says. “I can be helpful working on fusion, but I thought, what if I can help more by enabling other people across all areas of nuclear? This department gave me so much, I wanted to give back.”

      Although the pandemic struck just months after she stepped into the role in 2019, White propelled the department toward a new strategic plan. “It captures all the urgency and passion of the faculty, and is attractive to new students, with more undergraduates enrolling and more graduate students applying,” she says. White sees the department advancing the broader goals of the field, “articulating why nuclear is fundamentally important across many dimensions for carbon-free electricity and generation.” This means getting students involved in advanced fission technologies such as nuclear batteries and small modular reactors, as well as giving them an education in fusion that will help catalyze a nascent energy industry.

      Restless for a challenge

      White feels she’s still growing into the leadership role. “I’m really enthusiastic and sometimes too intense for people, so I have to dial it back during challenging conversations,” she says. She recently completed a Harvard Business School course on leadership.

      As the recently named co-chair of MIT’s Climate Nucleus (along with Professor Noelle Selin), charged with overseeing MIT’s campus initiatives around climate change, White says she draws on a repertoire of skills that come naturally to her: listening carefully, building consensus, and seeing value in the diversity of opinion. She is optimistic about mobilizing the Institute around goals to lower MIT’s carbon footprint, “using the entire campus as a research lab,” she says.

      In the midst of this push, White continues to advance projects of concern to her, such as making nuclear physics education more accessible. She developed an in-class module involving a simple particle detector for measuring background radiation. “Any high school or university student could build this experiment in 10 minutes and see alpha particle clusters and muons,” she says.

      White is also planning to host “Rising Stars,” an international conference intended to help underrepresented groups break barriers to entry in the field of nuclear science and engineering. “Grand intellectual challenges like saving the world appeal to all genders and backgrounds,” she says.

      These projects, her departmental and institutional duties, and most recently a new job chairing DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee leave her precious little time for a life outside work. But she makes time for walks and backpacking with her husband and toddler son, and reading the latest books by female faculty colleagues, such as “The New Breed,” by Media Lab robotics researcher Kate Darling, and “When People Want Punishment,” by Lily Tsai, Ford Professor of Political Science. “There are so many things I don’t know and want to understand,” says White.

      Yet even at leisure, White doesn’t slow down. “It’s restlessness: I love to learn, and anytime someone says a problem is hard, or impossible, I want to tackle it,” she says. There’s no time off, she believes, when the goal is “solving climate change and amplifying the work of other people trying to solve it.” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Energy

      Preparing global online learners for the clean energy transition

      by

      After a career devoted to making the electric power system more efficient and resilient, Marija Ilic came to MIT in 2018 eager not just to extend her research in new directions, but to prepare a new generation for the challenges of the clean-energy transition.

      To that end, Ilic, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decisions Systems (LIDS) and a senior staff member at Lincoln Laboratory in the Energy Systems Group, designed an edX course that captures her methods and vision: Principles of Modeling, Simulation, and Control for Electric Energy Systems.

      EdX is a provider of massive open online courses produced in partnership with MIT, Harvard University, and other leading universities. Ilic’s class made its online debut in June 2021, running for 12 weeks, and it is one of an expanding set of online courses funded by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) to provide global learners with a view of the shifting energy landscape.

      Ilic first taught a version of the class while a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, rolled out a second iteration at MIT just as the pandemic struck, and then revamped the class for its current online presentation. But no matter the course location, Ilic focuses on a central theme: “With the need for decarbonization, which will mean accommodating new energy sources such as solar and wind, we must rethink how we operate power systems,” she says. “This class is about how to pose and solve the kinds of problems we will face during this transformation.”

      Hot global topic

      The edX class has been designed to welcome a broad mix of students. In summer 2021, more than 2,000 signed up from 109 countries, ranging from high school students to retirees. In surveys, some said they were drawn to the class by the opportunity to advance their knowledge of modeling. Many others hoped to learn about the move to decarbonize energy systems.

      “The energy transition is a hot topic everywhere in the world, not just in the U.S.,” says teaching assistant Miroslav Kosanic. “In the class, there were veterans of the oil industry and others working in investment and finance jobs related to energy who wanted to understand the potential impacts of changes in energy systems, as well as students from different fields and professors seeking to update their curricula — all gathered into a community.”

      Kosanic, who is currently a PhD student at MIT in electrical engineering and computer science, had taken this class remotely in the spring semester of 2021, while he was still in college in Serbia. “I knew I was interested in power systems, but this course was eye-opening for me, showing how to apply control theory and to model different components of these systems,” he says. “I finished the course and thought, this is just the beginning, and I’d like to learn a lot more.” Kosanic performed so well online that Ilic recruited him to MIT, as a LIDS researcher and edX course teaching assistant, where he grades homework assignments and moderates a lively learner community forum.

      A platform for problem-solving

      The course starts with fundamental concepts in electric power systems operations and management, and it steadily adds layers of complexity, posing real-world problems along the way. Ilic explains how voltage travels from point to point across transmission lines and how grid managers modulate systems to ensure that enough, but not too much, electricity flows. “To deliver power from one location to the next one, operators must constantly make adjustments to ensure that the receiving end can handle the voltage transmitted, optimizing voltage to avoid overheating the wires,” she says.

      In her early lectures, Ilic notes the fundamental constraints of current grid operations, organized around a hierarchy of regional managers dealing with a handful of very large oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power plants, and occupied primarily with the steady delivery of megawatt-hours to far-flung customers. But historically, this top-down structure doesn’t do a good job of preventing loss of energy due to sub-optimal transmission conditions or due to outages related to extreme weather events.

      These issues promise to grow for grid operators as distributed resources such as solar and wind enter the picture, Ilic tells students. In the United States, under new rules dictated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, utilities must begin to integrate the distributed, intermittent electricity produced by wind farms, solar complexes, and even by homes and cars, which flows at voltages much lower than electricity produced by large power plants.

      Finding ways to optimize existing energy systems and to accommodate low- and zero-carbon energy sources requires powerful new modes of analysis and problem-solving. This is where Ilic’s toolbox comes in: a mathematical modeling strategy and companion software that simplifies the input and output of electrical systems, no matter how large or how small. “In the last part of the course, we take up modeling different solutions to electric service in a way that is technology-agnostic, where it only matters how much a black-box energy source produces, and the rates of production and consumption,” says Ilic.

      This black-box modeling approach, which Ilic pioneered in her research, enables students to see, for instance, “what is happening with their own household consumption, and how it affects the larger system,” says Rupamathi Jaddivada PhD ’20, a co-instructor of the edX class and a postdoc in electrical engineering and computer science. “Without getting lost in details of current or voltage, or how different components work, we think about electric energy systems as dynamical components interacting with each other, at different spatial scales.” This means that with just a basic knowledge of physical laws, high school and undergraduate students can take advantage of the course “and get excited about cleaner and more reliable energy,” adds Ilic.

      What Jaddivada and Ilic describe as “zoom in, zoom out” systems thinking leverages the ubiquity of digital communications and the so-called “internet of things.” Energy devices of all scales can link directly to other devices in a network instead of just to a central operations hub, allowing for real-time adjustments in voltage, for instance, vastly improving the potential for optimizing energy flows.

      “In the course, we discuss how information exchange will be key to integrating new end-to-end energy resources and, because of this interactivity, how we can model better ways of controlling entire energy networks,” says Ilic. “It’s a big lesson of the course to show the value of information and software in enabling us to decarbonize the system and build resilience, rather than just building hardware.”

      By the end of the course, students are invited to pursue independent research projects. Some might model the impact of a new energy source on a local grid or investigate different options for reducing energy loss in transmission lines.

      “It would be nice if they see that we don’t have to rely on hardware or large-scale solutions to bring about improved electric service and a clean and resilient grid, but instead on information technologies such as smart components exchanging data in real time, or microgrids in neighborhoods that sustain themselves even when they lose power,” says Ilic. “I hope students walk away convinced that it does make sense to rethink how we operate our basic power systems and that with systematic, physics-based modeling and IT methods we can enable better, more flexible operation in the future.”

      This article appears in the Autumn 2021 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative More