Dr. Valerie Izzo is a computational plasma physicist with expertise in 3D MHD simulations of fusion plasmas. She pioneered nonlinear MHD modeling of mitigated tokamak disruptions by impurity injection. She is responsible for several extensions to the NIMROD MHD code, including incorporation of the atomic physics model for impurity radiation and a drift-orbit model for runaway electron confinement.  Beginning with her dissertation work on spheromak current drive and continuing with the application of resonant magnetic perturbations in tokamaks, she also contributed to the development of time-varying 3D magnetic field boundary conditions for NIMROD, which she has recently applied to runaway electron deconfinement in the current quench phase of tokamak disruptions. 

Dr. Izzo received her PhD at the University of Washington in 2004 and subsequently worked as a postdoc at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center and a research scientist at the UCSD Center for Energy Research. She has worked in collaboration with the Fusion Theory Group at General Atomics for over 15 years and has served as a member of FESAC and the ITPA MHD group. She founded Fiat Lux in 2018.