Arun Persaud, a senior scientist and deputy program head of the Fusion Science & Ion Beam Technology (FS&IBT) Program in the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), will now lead the FS&IBT program. Persaud succeeds Thomas Schenkel, the former program head, who joined the U.S. Government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) earlier this year.
“I am honored to lead the talented research team at FS&IBT and look forward to continuing the momentum established by Thomas Schenkel,” says Persaud. “We will keep driving innovation and discovery at the Lab, advancing the frontiers of ion beam technology and its applications.”
He adds that under Thomas’ leadership, FS&IBT has made “remarkable strides in quantum information science as part of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program and expanded our research portfolio into many new areas, including Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and Google funding; I am eager to build on the foundations he established.”
Building on Thomas’s success, Persaud says his goals for FSIBT “will be to continue to explore new ion beam technologies and apply these technologies in a broad range of areas, from dark matter research to carbon sequestration,” adding that he is “committed to advancing quantum information science within FES, leveraging Thomas’s strong foundation. Additionally, we plan to grow in the area of Associated Particle Imaging and other neutron-based techniques, especially with applications in the planetary sciences.”
Arun Persaud (left) and Thomas Schenkel make adjustments on the Associated Particle Imaging Test Stand. Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab
He is collaborating with colleagues from the Lab’s Earth & Environmental Sciences Division to develop a 3D elemental imaging instrument using Associated Particle Imaging. This instrument has the potential to significantly enhance our ability to measure and monitor the carbon content in the soil of agricultural lands. For his contributions to this research, Persaud was recognized in December 2023 as one of the Physical Science Area’s “Inventors/Developers of the Year” by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). Based on the number of disclosures submitted to the IPO, this award is presented to the most prolific inventors and software developers in each area of the Lab.
He is also working on color centers in silicon, tiny defects introduced into the crystal lattice by intense ion beams that promise a new way of forming the building blocks for a range of quantum technologies. He says these diverse projects “have allowed me to span multiple scientific fields, from physics and materials science to engineering.”
Persaud joined the Lab in 2000 as a visiting scholar in the Ion Beam Technology Group, now part of the FS&IBT Program. Excited by the research conducted at the Lab, he began his doctoral studies on single ion implantation for quantum computer applications under the supervision of Schenkel. After completing his Ph.D., he spent two years at the Institute of Nanostructure Technologies and Analytics at the University of Kassel in Germany, focusing on atomic force microscopy. Persaud returned to the Lab as a postdoctoral researcher in 2007. During this time, he designed and built a compact tandem accelerator for gamma-ray production, which was developed and operated jointly with colleagues at Sandia National Laboratories. Throughout his time at the Lab, he has contributed to exciting research projects, including developing and testing MEMS-based multi-beam linacs and experiments with intense ion beams to study warm-dense matter, radiation damage in materials, and novel forms of qubit synthesis.
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