When Lauryn Kortman enrolled in Founder’s Journey, MIT’s entrepreneur-based first-year student seminar, she didn’t expect it would lead to a role in fusion research. As part of the program’s arranged visit to the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), Kortman learned about SPARC, a new fusion experiment that expects to demonstrate a faster and less-expensive path to carbon-free energy. The project embodied her own entrepreneurial spirit and sparked in her a desire to be part of the team.
“I emailed a bunch of PSFC researchers because I didn’t see any Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) listing,” she says. “I wanted to see if I could get involved in the material side of the experiment.”
The materials science and engineering major’s request got the attention of PSFC Director Dennis Whyte and postdoc David Fischer, now her direct supervisor, who introduced her to ARC, a follow-up to SPARC. Both machines are conventional tokamaks, with magnets...
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