8/23/2018 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
“I submitted an abstract earlier this year,” Jambunathan, who studies with Professor Deborah Levin in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. “From the abstracts, mine was selected as one of 11 finalists.”
According to the society’s website, the purpose of these awards “is to encourage both outstanding student contributions and greater student participation as principal or sole authors of papers as well as to acknowledge the importance of student contributions to the fields embraced by the NPSS.”
Jambunathan said she presented the paper before a panel of judges at the conference in Denver last month. The work was judged based on its originality, value to the community, and delivery.
Her paper is entitled, “Comparison of Plasma Plume Characteristics Obtained Using PIC-DSMC Approach with Boltzmann Approximations.”
Jambunathan commented on the research saying, “The most challenging part in this work was to develop a self-consistent boundary condition for the fully kinetic plasma plume expansion simulations to reach steady-state without undergoing non-physical or numerical instabilities.
“I believe that this work would be a significant contribution to the computational plasma physics community that need to study the kinetic behavior of electrons for applications that involve weakly ionized low density plasma.”
Jambunathan said although this was not her first experience in presenting a paper, she always enjoys meeting experts in the field in a conference setting.