November 14, 2025 Wright awarded Pivot Fellowship to advance fusion technology Written By: Lili Sarajian Departments: Nuclear Engineering & Engineering Physics Categories: Awards|Faculty Adelle Wright, Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was awarded a Pivot Fellowship from the Simons Foundation. Aptly named, the fellowship supports researchers pivoting to apply their expertise to a new area of research. Wright is one of eight faculty scholars to join the 2025 class of Pivot Fellows. The leading scholars represent disciplines spanning the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, data science, and computer science. Wright’s research paves the way for the deployment of nuclear fusion technologies as part of a sustainable energy solution by combining cutting-edge numerical simulation with modern applied mathematics to overcome critical macroscopic physics challenges of magnetic confinement. Her lab is a multi-disciplinary research team, bringing together cutting edge insights from physics, applied mathematics and computer science to investigate plasma physics, nonlinear dynamics, high-performance computing, and issues of nuclear energy technology design and deployment. “Interdisciplinary collaboration is such an important part of modern science, so it’s amazing to be part of a program that champions these interactions,” says Wright. “I’m very honored to be named a Simons Foundation Pivot Fellow.”