People

Director
Alexey Arefiev ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0597-0976

Alexey Arefiev joined the faculty at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in 2017. He received his B.Sc. in physics from Novosibirsk State University (Russia) and his Ph.D in physics from The University of Texas at Austin.

Scientist
Mario Manuel ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5834-1161

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Post-doc researcher
David Blackman ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7852-4216

Started working at UCSD as a Post-Doctoral researcher with Alexey at the beginning of 2020. Obtained a PhD from University of York in 2017 at the York Plasma Institute with John Pasley and Alex Robinson (at RAL) on short-pulse shock-generation. Worked as a Post-Doc with Vladimir Tikhonchuk and Rachel Nuter on plasma waves with OAM at CELIA in the University of Bordeaux from 2018-2020.

PhD student
Haotian Mao ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5368-6064

Haotian Mao became a PhD student at UCSD in April 2019. Prior to this, he graduated as a master student from Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department at UCSD. He received a B.Sc. in Energy & Power Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China. 

I-Lin Yeh ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0796-717X

I-Lin Yeh started the Ph.D. at UCSD Physics in the 2019 fall and joined the Arefiev group in the 2020 summer. He received a B.Sc. in Physics and MS in Space and Plasma Sciences from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

Kavin Tangtartharakul ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7992-924X

Kavin Tangtartharakul graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UCSD in Spring 2018. 

Michael Pokornik

I started my phd at UCSD in the fall of 2019.  Previously, I graduated with a MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University and received a B.S. in Applied Physics and a BA in Mathematics from Texas Lutheran University.  Before joining the lab I worked at General Atomics as a computational laser scientist.

Yutong He

Yutong He joined the Arefiev group in Fall 2018. He holds undergraduate degrees from UCSD in physics and mathematics. He is mainly interested in computational physics.

Alumni Lab Members

Post-doc researcher
Oliver Jansen

Oliver Jansen began his appointment as a postdocoral scholar at UCSD in September 2017. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Interaction, Fusion par Confinement Inertiel, Astrophysique group at the CELIA laboratory of the University of Bordeaux. He graduated from the Heinrich-Heine University at Düsseldorf in 2014.

Tao Wang ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5250-7589

Tao Wang's research focus is electron acceleration and gamma-ray generation in structured targets. He came to UCSD in September 2017, before which he was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a B.Sc. in applied physics from Jilin University in China. 

Yin Shi

Yin Shi  became  a postdocoral scholar at UCSD from  April  2018.  He  was a  visiting researcher ( with Newton International Fellowship) at Imperial College  between  April 2016 and March 2018.  He got his PhD from State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, China at 2015.

PhD student
Kathleen Weichman ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3487-7922

Kathleen Weichman graduated from UCSD in 2020 with a doctoral dissertation entitled "Effects of kilotesla-level applied magnetic fields on relativistic laser-plasma interactions". They are a recipient of the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship and hold a B.Sc. in Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following graduation, they accepted a scientist position at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

Masters student
Katherine Chin

Katherine joined the group in the summer of 2018 and graduated with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering in 2019.

Undergraduate student
Alexandre Leonelli

Alexandre Leonelli is an undergraduate studying Physics at UC San Diego. He joined the Arefiev group in the summer of 2019 to pursue his interest in computational physics.

Victor Sanchez ORCID ID https://orcid.org/1234

Victor Alejandro Sanchez is an undergraduate studying Chemical Engineering at UC San Diego. He joined the Arefiev group in Summer 2021. Victor is currently pursuing a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

Wilson Li

Wilson Li is an undergraduate studying Aerospace Engineering at UCSD. He joined the Arefiev group in Spring 2019.