Schmitz elected as APS Fellow

Professor Oliver Schmitz has been elected as a 2025 American Physical Society (APS) Fellow. This prestigious fellowship honors scientists for research excellence and exceptional service to the physics community. 

Schmitz is a professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at UW–Madison. He specializes in plasma edge physics for fusion energy applications and developing state of the art numerical methods for 3D plasma edge transport and plasma-wall interaction. 

APS Fellows are nominated by their professional peers. Each year, no more than one-half percent of the society’s members, excluding students, are honored with this distinction. Specifically, he was recognized for “advancing the general understanding of 3D plasma boundary layers towards viable divertor solutions for stellarators, as well as divertor exhaust schemes in tokamaks with applied resonant magnetic perturbation fields.”  

“The APS-DPP fellowship is a huge acknowledgment of my colleagues’ efforts to discover how 3D plasma boundaries work,” says Schmitz. “This was a new field when I started my research career, but it has universal application potential for stellarators and tokamaks. It is highly encouraging to see that this recognition also recognizes this research field and its importance.”

Schmitz and his research team have made recent discoveries that enable building a new type of stellarator divertor. Stellarators, like the Helically Symmetric eXperiment (HSX) in the College of Engineering at UW–Madison, are 3D magnetic plasma confinement systems that enable fusion reactions. Divertors control the heat and particle exhaust from the confined plasmas. 

“There is currently no viable solution for a stellarator divertor available that we can build and which can handle the heat and particle flux from fusion plasmas to also exhaust particles and the helium ash from the fusion process” says Schmitz. “Translating our leading expertise in 3D chaotic boundary systems to design a new stellarator divertor is the next frontier I would like to take on with my group and our collaborators.”

He and his research group are currently developing material solutions that can be implemented technologically for such complex 3D boundary plasmas. Schmitz’ work will also help advance solutions for divertor exhaust schemes in tokomaks, such as the Pegasus-III Experiment at UW–Madison.

In addition to his research pursuits, Schmitz serves as the Director of the Grainger Institute for Engineering and the Associate Dean for Corporate Engagement and Entrepreneurship at UW–Madison. These roles demonstrate his commitment to bringing research innovations to market by fostering large-scale collaborations, expanding industry engagement and bolstering entrepreneurial spirit.