Ph.D., Princeton University, 1984
B.A., University of California, San Diego, 1977
Professor Heidbrink earned his B.A. degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1977. For the next two years he performed industrial research in pulsed power at Maxwell Laboratories. In 1984, he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. After working as a staff member on the TFTR tokamak (Princeton) and the DIII-D tokamak (General Atomics), he joined the UCI Physics Department in 1988. He was the 1995 recipient of the Lauds & Laurels award for Distinguished Teaching and was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1996. In 2004, he received the Excellence in Plasma Physics Research award from the American Physical Society. He won the UCI Academic Senate's Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching in 2017-2018.
Professor Heidbrink studies energetic particles in magnetic fusion experiments. Instabilities that are driven unstable by the free energy in the fast-ion or runaway electron population are a major area of study. Other important topics include diagnostic development and measurements of fast-ion confinement. The research is conducted on major facilities worldwide, including the DIII-D tokamak in San Diego.
In addition to his research, Professor Heidbrink enjoys teaching all levels of the curriculum, from large introductory courses to graduate plasma physics. He also trains undergraduates to perform physics assemblies in neighboring elementary schools. For more information regarding Physics and Astronomy outreach activities, please visit: https://www.physics.uci.edu/~outreach/.