Ian Hutchinson

B.A. in Physics from Cambridge University (1972) and a Ph.D. in Physics from Australian National University (1976).  After participating in ground-breaking research (1976-69) on MIT’s earliest major tokamak experiment, he worked on a different confinement configuration, the Reversed Field Pinch, with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, where he made landmark measurements of magnetic turbulence structure showing that it could explain the energy transport. He returned to MIT in 1983 as a member of the Nuclear Engineering department faculty. He directed the Alcator project from 1987 to 2003, and served as Head of the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering from 2003 to 2009.