Chandrashekhar J. Joshi
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Chandrashekhar Janardan Joshi (born July 22, 1953, at
Wai, Maharashtra Wai (ISO 15919, ISO: ''Vāī''; Pronunciation: Help:IPA/Marathi, aːi) is a town in Satara district of Maharashtra state in India. Located on the Krishna River, Wai was a prominent town during the Peshwa era. Two important Maratha, Marathi ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
) is an Indian–American experimental plasma physicist. He is known for his pioneering work in plasma-based particle acceleration techniques for which he won the 2006
James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics The James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics is an annual American Physical Society (APS) award that is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of the Plasma Physics. It was established in 1975 by Maxwell Technologies, I ...
and the 2023
Hannes Alfvén Prize The Hannes Alfvén Prize is a prize established by the European Physical Society (EPS) Plasma Physics Division in 2000. The Prize is awarded annually by the European Physical Society at the EPS Conference on Plasma Physics for outstanding work in ...
(with Pisin Chen and James Rosenzweig). Joshi was elected a member of the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
in 2014 for contributions to development of laser- and beam-driven plasma accelerators. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering, the director of the Center for High Frequency Electronics and the head of the Neptune Laboratory for Advanced Accelerator Research at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
.


Early life and education

Joshi had his primary education at Dravid High school, Wai. While in 9th grade, he was selected by 'Pestalozzi Children's village Trust' in England and went to England for his further studies. He received his
B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
(1974) in
nuclear engineering Nuclear engineering is the engineering discipline concerned with designing and applying systems that utilize the energy released by nuclear processes. The most prominent application of nuclear engineering is the generation of electricity. Worldwide ...
from the
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
and
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
(1978) in
applied physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination of fac ...
from the
University of Hull The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hu ...
, which are both in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. Following a two-year stint as a research associate at the
National Research Council of Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC; ) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research and development. It is the largest federal research and development organization in Canada. Th ...
, where he worked on laser-plasma interactions, he joined UCLA first as a researcher and became a faculty member since 1988.


Scientific contributions

At UCLA, Joshi has built a strong research group that has done pioneering work in the areas of laser-
plasma instabilities In plasma physics, plasma stability concerns the stability properties of a plasma in equilibrium and its behavior under small perturbations. The stability of the system determines if the perturbations will grow, oscillate, or be damped out. It ...
, plasma-based light sources,
laser fusion Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy process that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with fuel. The targets are small pellets, typically containing deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H). Typicall ...
and basic plasma experiments. Joshi has made many fundamental contributions to the understanding of extremely
nonlinear optical Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in nonlinear media, that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity is typicall ...
effects in plasmas. Most notable including his first experimental demonstration of four-wave mixing, stimulated Raman forward instability, resonant self-focusing, frequency upshifting by ionization fronts and nonlinear coupling between electron-plasma waves. His group is best known, however, for developing the field of plasma-based
particle accelerators A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental ...
over the past three decades.


Honors and awards

Joshi is a Fellow of the APS,
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...
and UK Institute of Physics. He is also the recipient of the 1996
John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research The American Physical Society gives out a number of awards for research excellence and conduct; topics include outstanding leadership, computational physics, lasers, mathematics, and more. Prizes David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of M ...
(jointly awarded with Christopher E. Clayton) as well as the 1997 . He was the APS
Centennial A centennial, or centenary in British English, is a 100th anniversary or otherwise relates to a century. Notable events Notable centennial events at a national or world-level include: * Centennial Exhibition, 1876, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ...
Speaker (1999) and a Distinguished Lecturer in Plasma Physics (2001). He was elected to the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
in 2014.


Citations

* John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research (1996): "''For their pioneering experiments in Plasma Based Accelerator Concepts; particularly for their unambiguous experimental demonstration that electrons can be accelerated to relativistic energies by the beating of two laser beams in a plasma with their frequency difference equal to the plasma frequency.''" * USPAS Prize for Achievement in Accelerator Physics and Technology (1997): ''"For pioneering experiments on high gradient, laser-driven, plasma beat-wave acceleration."'' * James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (2006): ''"For his insight and leadership in applying plasma concepts to high energy electron and positron acceleration, and for his creative exploration of related aspects of plasma physics.''" * Hannes Alfvén Prize (2023, with Pisin Chen and James Rosenzweig): "For proposing, demonstrating and conducting impressive ground-breaking experiments on plasma wakefield accelerators driven by particle beams, thus firmly establishing the new concept of plasma acceleration and their applications in the scientific community."


References


Publications

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Joshi, Chandrashekhar 1953 births Living people Alumni of the University of London Fellows of the American Physical Society Plasma physicists Indian physicists American people of Indian descent Fellows of the IEEE Fellows of the Institute of Physics Alumni of the University of Hull American plasma physicists Naturalized citizens of the United States