Research Team

Alexander Fridman is the Nyheim Chair Professor with Drexel University, Camden, NJ, USA, and the Director of the Nyheim Plasma Institute. His current research interests include plasma chemistry, including new plasma approaches to material treatment, fuel conversion, environmental control, and biomedical applications. He has authored eight books and over 1000 papers (total citation index exceeds 32 000 citation h-index 72).
Prof. Fridman was a recipient of the Stanley Kaplan Award in Chemical Kinetics and Engineering Systems, the Italian Academy Alma Mater Studiorum Award of University of Bologna, the George Soros Award in Physics, the DuPont Research Prize, the International Plasma Society Award, the Distinguished Professorships of University of Illinois, and the State Prize of USSR. He is one of the world pioneers of Plasma Medicine, and the Founding President of the International Society on Plasma Medicine.

Danil Dobrynin received the B.S. degree in physical electronics from Petrozavodsk State University, Petrozavodsk, Russia, in 2008, and the Ph.D. degree from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, in 2011. In 2011, he joined the Drexel Plasma Institute, Camden, NJ, USA, as a Research Faculty and the Director of the Applied Physics Laboratory. His current research interests include experimental plasma and gas discharge diagnostics, discharges in liquid phase, plasma applications in medicine and biology, and plasma engineering.

John E. Foster received the B.S. degree in physics from Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, USA, in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree in applied physics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 1996.,From 1996 to 1998, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the NSF Center for Plasma Aided Manufacturing, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA. From 1998 to 2006, he was a Senior Research Engineer with the NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH, USA, where he conducted research on electric propulsion devices such as ion thrusters. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan. His current research interests include plasma propulsion and plasma-based environmental remediation solutions.

Alexander Rabinovich is currently an Associate Director and a Research Professor with Nyheim Plasma Institute, Camden, NJ, USA, where he is also the Director of Fuel Conversion and Hydrogen Production Lab. His current research interests include the development of new plasma processes and systems for waste treatment and production of hydrogen-rich gas from a wide range of hydrocarbon fuels including diesel, gasoline, JP8, and biofuels, and also include plasma-assisted direct liquefaction of natural gas with the production of valuable gaseous and liquid products.

Mark J. Kushner received the BS in Nuclear Engineering and the BA in Astronomy from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1976; and the MS and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1977 and 1979. He served on the technical staffs of Sandia National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining Spectra Technology where he was Director of Electron, Atomic, and Molecular Physics. In 1986, Dr. Kushner joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was the Founder Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering while also serving in many administrative roles. In January 2005, Dr. Kushner became Dean of Engineering and the Melsa Professor of Engineering at Iowa State University where he established the Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute and initiated the 2050 Challenge to focus education, research and outreach on addressing the most pressing of societal issues. Prof. Kushner joined the University of Michigan as founding director of the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering and George I. Haddad Collegiate Professor in September 2008. Prof. Kushner’s research area is low temperature plasmas, their fundamental properties and technological applications, ranging from lasers to material processing. He is a Fellow of the APS, IEEE, Optical Society of America, American Vacuum Society and Institute of Physics. He is on the editorial boards of several journals and editor-in-chief of Plasma Sources Science and Technology. Prof. Kushner has received the Semiconductor Research Corp. Technical Excellence Award, the Tegal Thinker Award for Plasma Etch Technology, the AVS Plasma Science and Technology Award, IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Award and the Semiconductor Industry Association University Researcher Award.

Carles Corbella got in 2006 his PhD in Applied Physics at the University of Barcelona, Spain. The topic was diamond-like carbon (DLC) and metal-DLC nanocomposite coatings grown by pulsed plasma techniques. In the meantime, he worked as research assistant in the sputtering laboratory of the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC). Next, Dr. Corbella performed a postdoctoral stage at the Fraunhofer IST in Braunschweig, Germany, to study the physics behind industrial-scale plasma reactors. In 2008, back in the Barcelona University, he investigated different paths to tune the surface properties of DLC-based films in view of their application as nanoimprint moulds. In the period 2011-2018, he worked as scientific researcher in the Reactive Plasmas Group (Experimentalphysik II) at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. There, he studied elementary interactions between plasmas and surfaces by means of particle beam experiments to model surface processes in magnetized pulsed plasmas. Since April 2018, Dr. Corbella is appointed postdoctoral researcher at the Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory to investigate the synthesis of nanomaterials by anodic arc discharge.