[note this refers to LPP personnel, not FFS. Find out about the difference between LPP and FFS.] Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. is an advanced research, consulting, and communications firm specializing in applications of plasma physics, especially fusion power. It was founded in 1974 in Lawrenceville, NJ, by Eric Lerner.

Current staff

At the moment, excluding the small simulation team, the project has the equivalent of three full-time technical personnel.  Eric Lerner (the principal investigator) and Krupakar Murali Subramanian (the Senior Research Scientist) are both employed full time.  Fred Van Roessel is LPP's part-time electrical engineer, and Derek Shannon works part-time as a research assistant, and is also part-time as LPP’s Director of Business Development.  This is in addition to Aaron Blake, new full-time Chief Financial Officer, who will now have primary responsibly for conducting the capital drive.

Staffing Needs

The staff of three full-time equivalent technical personnel has proven to be just too small for optimal functioning of the project.  Right now, the pace of progress is limited by the time available to the staff, no matter how productively they work.  Mr. Lerner is wholly responsible for theory and data analysis, and has the primary role in producing reports and the published papers that are essential to LPP’s growing credibility, as well as directing the gathering of experimental data.  Dr. Subramanian has had the primary role in the on-going re-design of the device, participates actively in the experimental shots, and has been very active in the maintenance of the instruments.  Mr. Van Roessel has taken over a leading role in the development and maintence of the instruments, especially the ICCD, and is active in the work on the device itself.  Mr. Shannon helps out wherever needed.  The fact that all have multiple responsibilities means that, for example, they must frequently stop firing the machine to catch up on data analysis, or urgent redesigns, or writing papers.

To make maximum use of the facility, LPP ideally needs a full-time technical staff of five.  They need to hire an additional theoretically-trained plasma physicist to focus exclusively on working with Mr. Lerner on data analysis, and an experienced electrical engineer to focus on the upgrading of the device and instrumentation.  This would allow the team to take data almost continuously and would almost double the amount of data they collect per month, which in turn would almost double LPP's overall rate of progress.