UC San Diego is a public research university in La Jolla, California, whose Center for Energy Research houses PISCES — a long-standing U.S. capability in plasma-surface interaction — and a boundary 📝plasma physics program built around it.
The center began informally in the fall of 1972 under Sanford S. Penner and was formally designated an organized research unit on 1 July 1974. Renamed the Center for Energy and Combustion Research in 1986, it took its present name in 2000 after absorbing the Fusion Energy Research Program — formed in 1994 when Robert Conn arrived from UCLA as dean of engineering with his fusion group — together with the Virtual Laboratory for Technology.
PISCES, the Plasma Interaction with Surface Component Experimental Station, is the program's core capability. Its linear devices hold candidate wall materials in steady-state, 📝fusion-relevant particle fluxes, so erosion, fuel retention and surface morphology in 📝plasma-facing components can be measured directly rather than inferred from a 📝Tokamak's shot-to-shot record. PISCES-RF, a liquid-cooled high-power steady-state helicon device, extends that to higher power, and the POSEIDON ion-beam accelerator allows a sample to take plasma bombardment and energetic ion irradiation at the same time. Russell Doerner and George Tynan are the program's principal investigators; the work is supported by the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.
The campus sits within a mile of the 📝DIII-D National Fusion Facility, and in October 2024 the Jacobs School of Engineering launched a Fusion Engineering Institute under founding director Javier Garay with co-director Farhat Beg. UC San Diego is also an 📝INFUSE partner: a 2022 award paired the university with Commonwealth Fusion Systems to characterize turbulent transport and confinement in 📝ARC using the STEP and CGYRO workflows.