Bielajew was looking to work on services that could positively impact international problems and feed her love of physics. Bielajew is now a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE).
Facing obstacles head-on has actually been part of Rachel Bielajews toolkit since she was a kid maturing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Credit: Gretchen Ertl
Looking into fusions big difficulty
You need to confine plasma successfully in order to produce the incredibly high temperatures (100 million degrees Celsius) combination needs, without melting the walls of the tokamak, the gadget that hosts these responses. Magnets can do the job, however “plasmas are unusual, they act oddly and are challenging to comprehend,” Bielajew says. Small instabilities in plasma can coalesce into fluctuating turbulence that can drive heat and particles out of the machine.
In high-confinement mode, the edges of the plasma have less tolerance for such rowdy behavior. “The turbulence gets damped out and sheared apart at the edge,” Bielajew states.
The concerns Bielajew is seeking to address: How do we get high confinement without ELMs? How do turbulence and transport contribute in plasmas? “We do not completely comprehend turbulence, although we have actually studied it for a very long time,” Bielajew states, “It is a big and crucial problem to resolve for combination to be a reality. I like that obstacle,” Bielajew includes.
By Poornima Apte, MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 4, 2022
MIT PhD student Rachel Bielajew is taking on plasma turbulence, and helping make a better world– through science and neighborhood action.
Seeing the drastic effects of environment modification play out in real-time in Malawi– the lives of the nations subsistence farmers swing wildly, depending on the rains– convinced Bielajew of the importance of nuclear engineering. “The idea of the altering world due to human impact was apparent, and they could see it,” Bielajew says.
A love of science
Challenging such challenges head-on has actually belonged to Bielajews toolkit since she was a child growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her daddy, Alex Bielajew, is a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan, and Bielajews mother likewise pursued graduate research studies.
Bielajews parents motivated her to follow her own path and she found it led to her daddys picked occupation: nuclear engineering. “I knew that MIT had a comprehensive program in blend and a lot of faculty in the field,” Bielajew says.
A similar tenacity has actually surfaced in Bielajews approach to research throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Through a collaboration, Bielajew conducts her plasma research study at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak in Germany. Traditionally, Bielajew would deliver the diagnostic to Germany, follow and install it, and carry out the research in individual.
DEI supporter
Having grown up with parental encouragement and in an environment that never ever doubted her location as a female in engineering, Bielajew understands not everybody has the very same chances. “I want that the world was in a location where all I had to do was care about my research study, but its not,” Bielajew states. Everyone requires a voice in constructing a better world,” Bielajew says.
To arrive, Bielajew co-launched NSEs Graduate Application Assistance Program, which links underrepresented student applicants with NSE coaches. She has been the DEI officer with NSEs trainee group, ANS, and is very involved in the departments DEI committee.
When it comes to future research study, Bielajew intends to concentrate on the experiments that make her concern existing paradigms about plasmas under high confinement. Bielajew has actually signed up more head-scratching “hmm” moments than “a-ha” ones. Measurements from her experiments drive the requirement for more intensive study.
Bielajews pets, Dobby and Winky, keep her company through everything. They came home with her from Malawi.
Seeing the extreme impacts of environment change play out in real-time in Malawi– the lives of the nations subsistence farmers swing hugely, depending on the rains– persuaded Bielajew of the importance of nuclear engineering. Bielajew is now a fourth-year doctoral prospect in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). Magnets can do the job, but “plasmas are strange, they behave strangely and are challenging to comprehend,” Bielajew says. Through a collaboration, Bielajew conducts her plasma research at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak in Germany. As for future research study, Bielajew hopes to concentrate on the experiments that make her question existing paradigms about plasmas under high confinement.
