Two ATAP doctoral students, Joseph Natal and Jared De Chant, whose work includes research carried out at ATAP’s BELLA Center, were awarded best student poster prizes at this year’s Advanced Accelerator Concepts Workshop (AAC2022). The workshop was held 6-11 November 2022 in Hauppauge, NY.

Additionally, Lauren Cooper, who worked with BELLA Center with the support of an Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) fellowship, won for a poster based on work she performed as part of her graduate studies at the University of Michigan.

Joseph Natal

Natal is researching laser and electron beam control technologies and diagnostics for laser-plasma accelerators at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Before starting his Ph.D., he interned at Berkeley Lab from June 2019 to August 2020.

His poster presentation, “High-bandwidth image-based predictive laser stabilization via optimized Fourier filters,” was judged the best in Working Group 5 – Beam Sources, Monitoring, and Control. The research, carried out at Berkeley Lab, demonstrates how a predictive control algorithm that utilizes Fourier filters can provide sub-micrometer precision for laser-pointing stabilization. The technique could augment conventional control algorithms by overcoming bandwidth limitations.

Jared DeChant

A first-year Ph.D. student at Michigan State University and research assistant at Berkeley Lab, DeChant is working on novel beam diagnostics and instrumentation, laser-plasma acceleration of electrons and ions, and dosimetry for various environments, including synchrotron light sources.

His paper, “Design Optimization of Permanent-Magnet Based Compact Transport Systems for Laser-Driven Proton Beams,” was awarded the best poster presentation in Working Group 6 – Laser-Plasma Acceleration of Ions. The work presents performance evaluations of transport beam simulations on various compact transport designs that utilize compact permanent magnets for the BELLA iP2 proton beamline.