Mawrters Making Their Mark

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a company associated with MIT that is working to develop commercial fusion energy, recently announced it had achieved a world record magnetic field strength of 20 Tesla. The team accomplished this using magnets made of a new material called high-temperature superconductor (HTS) tape.

Maise Shepard '20, a technician at CFS, is on the team developing these magnets. “Research and development toward getting to net fusion has been an incredibly meaningful use of science that I’m lucky to be a part of,” Shepard says. “The answer to the climate crisis is finding an energy source for the world that is clean and produces more than what we put into it. Natural phenomena like stars tell us that fusion energy is possible, and we’re closer than ever to harnessing that. Recently achieving 20T with our magnet means we’re on the right path toward the type of plasma confinement needed for fusion. I’m working on the superconductors that generate this magnetic field.”

Back on campus, Shepard’s mentor in the Bryn Mawr Plasma Lab, Associate Professor of Physics David Schaffner, was excited to hear the news. “The fact that Maise gets to be involved in such a tremendous achievement is very gratifying,” he says.