Farhat Beg is the HEDP Group's Principal Investigator and a Professor in UCSD's Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department.

Farhat Beg received his Ph.D. from Imperial College London and joined UC San Diego in 2003 as an assistant professor. Currently, he is a Professor and Shao-Chi and Lily Lin Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Engineering Science at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. His expertise is in the field of laser plasma interaction, pulsed power-driven X- and Z-pinches, and neutron sources. He has published over 270 papers in refereed journals, including Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Photonics and Physical Review Letters, with total citations exceeding 10,000 with and H-index of 52, according to the Web of Science. He is the fellow of the American Physical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a winner of the Department of Junior Faculty Award (2005) and IEEE Early Career Award (2008). He was the recipient of the Plasma Science and Applications Committee (PSAC) Award by the IEEE in 2021 for his outstanding contributions on both laser- and Z-pinch-driven plasma physics including energetic particle production, ultra-high magnetic field generation and formation of well diagnosed high energy density plasmas. He has served as the Chair of the High-Energy Density Science Association (HEDSA) in 2009/10, 2017/19 and now in 2022. This is a unique feat that he has been elected three times to lead the HEDSA. The HEDSA is an association of scientists from academia that promote High-Energy Density Laboratory Plasma in universities and small businesses, as well as in national laboratories. It also advocates new initiatives to maintain the health of High-Energy Density Science and the related workforce in the United States, including the formation of a High-Energy Density Science Users Program.

Professor Beg is an expert in Z-pinch discharges and the interaction of very high power laser pulses with matter, and has been active in developing pulsed x-ray and neutron sources. In recent experiments, Beg pioneered the use of compact X-pinch as an x-ray backlighter source for Z-pinch experiments. Beg's work based on table-top plasma focus neutron source has generated considerable interest and has been cited in the American Institute of Physics news, in Nature and in Physics Today.

Research Interests:   inertial confinement fusion, high energy density physics, short pulse high intensity laser matter interactions, pulsed power Z-pinches, X-pinches, plasma focus, x-ray and neutron sources

Undergraduate Courses & Research

Professor Beg has taught several undergraduate courses over last several years. These courses include MAE 170, MAE 171A, and MAE 171B. He has also taught Freshman’s seminar MAE87 – Energy from fusion.

Undergraduate students perform research on various aspects of High Energy Density Physics. Professor Beg's undergraduate students have won best poster prizes at the Engineering Undergraduate Research conference and assembly, organized by the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Graduate Courses

Dr. Beg introduced a new course on High Energy Density Physics (MAE 207) at UCSD. This course was taught first time in Winter 2005. He also taught MAE 227B Modern Topics in Plasma Physics. Both courses discuss various aspects of High Energy Density Physics and pertinent applications.

Email:      fbeg@ucsd.edu
Phone:   858-822-1266
Office:    SERF 241

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Mathieu Bailly-Grandvaux received his Ph.D. degree in 2017 from the University of Bordeaux, France, specializing in Astrophysics, Plasma and Particles. In April 2017, he relocated to California to work as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) group of Professor Farhat Beg at the University of California San Diego, where he is currently an Assistant Project Scientist. Mathieu received an award in 2018 from the University of Osaka, Japan, for his outstanding contribution in the field of HEDP and Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE). His research focuses on the study of energy transport and particle acceleration in plasmas, with a particular interest in magnetized environments and applications in IFE and laboratory astrophysics. He has over 30 publications in prestigious journals (>1000 citations, h-index of 13), presented his work to major plasma physics international conferences, and contributed to the writing of reports for the community. As sole principal investigator, his research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and he is co-leading projects funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the University of California.

Research Interests:   Magnetized high-energy-density plasmas, charged particles acceleration and transport, magnetic field generation, inertial confinement fusion, fast ignition, laboratory astrophysics.

Email:      mbaillygrandvaux@ucsd.edu
Phone:   858-344-4690