Faculty

Biography

 Petros Tzeferacos joined the faculty from the University of Chicago, where he was a research associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics. He has additionally held a visiting scientist position with the University of Oxford since 2013 and with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 2015.

Tzeferacos was elected vice chair of the High Energy Density Science Association in 2017, member of the Omega Laser User Group Executive Committee in 2018, and vice chair of the National Ignition Facility User Group Executive Committee in 2019. His research has been funded by organizations that include the United States Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration, the US DOE Office of Science, and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, the American Physical Society awarded him the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research. His work has been published in peer-reviewed publications, including Nature Physics, Nature Communications, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Research Overview

Petros Tzeferacos’s research combines numerical modeling and laser-driven laboratory experiments to study high-energy-density science, plasma physics, and fundamental astrophysical processes. His research provides important insights on fusion energy, how magnetic fields are generated, and the nature of magnetized plasmas. Since 2013, Tzeferacos has led the development of FLASH, a publicly available multiphysics computing code widely used by astrophysicists and laboratory plasma researchers. In 2018, while at the University of Chicago, he became the director of the Flash Center for Computational Science and has since moved the Center to the University of Rochester.

Research Interests

• computational astrophysics