Professor Amitava Bhattacharjee is an Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and Head of the Theory Department of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He also serves as Co-Director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics.
He received his Ph.D. at Princeton University (1981) in theoretical plasma physics from the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He has taught previously at Columbia University (1984-93) in the Department of Applied Physics, at the University of Iowa (1993-2003) in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the University of New Hampshire (2003-12), where he served as Paul Professor of Space Science. At the University of Iowa, he received the James Van Allen Natural Sciences Fellowship (1996), the Faculty Scholar Award (1997-2000), and the Michael J. Brody Award (2003). He has served as Senior Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics, as Chair of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society, and as Founding Chair of the Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics of the American Physical Society, and on various prize and fellowship committees. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union.
His research interests include: magnetic reconnection, turbulence and singularity formation, kinetic theory, free-electron lasers, and complex (or dusty) plasmas. He and his students and postdoctoral colleagues have authored about 250 papers with broad applications to laboratory (including fusion), space and astrophysical plasmas.