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New Huntsville conference will explore opportunities in plasma science and engineering

aiapc article

The first Annual International Alabama Plasma Physics Conference (AIAPC), which is directly connected to statewide efforts to establish plasma science and engineering (PSE) as a major Alabama industry, is coming to Huntsville Oct. 28-30.

The theme of the coming conference, which will be held at The Westin, is “AI-Informed Plasma Physics – The Opportunities.” Organizers plan to make AIAPC an annual event. For a national and state audience, AIAPC is intended to bring to the forefront ideas, approaches and expertise to explore cutting-edge research directions that are likely to revolutionize the PSE field. As a state of matter, plasma makes up more than 90% of the observable universe and underpins several high-tech manufacturing industries.

artificial intelligence

As artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) have become a cultural force over the past couple of years, AI/ML has been a very active area of application and research in plasma physics for well over a decade, and plasma physicists have laid the groundwork for a large part of the discipline, says Dr. Gary Zank, principal investigator of Future Technologies & enabling Plasma Processes (FTPP) and director of UAH’s Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR).

“Unlike the popular idea embodied in large language models, plasma physicists have been exploring the intersection of plasma physics models, large data sets including sparse data, and sophisticated statistical methodologies to explore both predictive models as well as augmenting our basic plasma physics models,” says Dr. Zank, who is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Aerojet Rocketdyne chair of the Department of Space Science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System

“This work is beginning to move into the mainstream of plasma physics, making now an august time to explore the potential of AI/ML throughout the broader plasma physics community,” he says.

Wider exposure

AIAPC is intended to provide wider professional exposure to plasma’s potential among scientists, faculty, researchers and students. Its conference committee is chaired by Dr. Zank. The committee includes FTPP lead researchers Dr. Vladimir Kolobov of UAH and CFD Research Corp., and Dr. Edward Thomas Jr., dean of the Colleges of Science and Mathematics at Auburn University, as well as Dr. Masaru Nakanotani, a research scientist at CSPAR and Dr. Lingling Zhao, a CSPAR researcher and UAH Department of Space Science assistant professor.

The conference is an outgrowth of FTPP’s efforts to promote the research, technological development and commercialization of products using highly energized plasma gases. FTPP is a $20 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant program led by UAH. The nine-member statewide FTPP coalition aims to transition plasma research into a wide range of applications, establishing Alabama as a Southeastern regional hub for plasma science expertise and creating thousands of new, high-paying technical careers in the state and region.

“Since the NSF-funded EPSCoR project FTPP is at the cutting edge of much of plasma physics, it makes sense for us to host one of the first such conferences and workshops in this emerging and rapidly developing field,” Dr. Zank says.

Besides UAH, members of the FTPP coalition are the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Auburn University, Tuskegee University, the University of South Alabama, Alabama A&M University, Alabama State University, Oakwood University and CFD Research Corp.