NERS Advisory Board Member

Section: Research

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Plasma Physicist

Biography

Dr. Ronnie Shepherd is a senior experimental physicist in the High Energy Density Physics section at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he has been for the past 28 years. He has performed research in areas from x-ray lasers to shock heating on pulse power, long-pulse laser facilities (e.g., Nova and Omega, Orion), and short pulse laser facilities (e.g., Titan, LULI, Rutherford, Orion, LCLS). This research has been driven by a desire to understand stellar interiors. His current research focuses on energy transport, opacity, and ionization in dense plasmas and as part of the CIMARRON project (a collaboration between theory and experiment to understand detailed physics of dense plasmas), Dr. Shepherd was a co-recipient of the 2012 Director’s Science and Technology Award. He is now the lead physicist in a research effort to study emission opacities in dense matter using short pulse laser-generated plasmas. Dr. Shepherd received his BSE, MSE, and Ph. D. from NERS at the University of Michigan.