Computational Plasma Physicist

Location: Lab-based in the Deep Tech Hub at Champaign, IL

Compensation: Meaningful Founding Equity Package (with transitioning base salary post funding round) About the Venture: Stealth-mode, pre-revenue deep-tech company engineering a new class of physics hardware at the intersection of light, matter, plasma, and charged particle beams. Powered by a foundational patent portfolio, our platform is developing and testing a proprietary plasma‑source architecture intended to reduce reliance on hazardous, high‑maintenance, and supply‑chain‑vulnerable legacy technologies across multiple industrial and scientific applications. Our founding team brings experience in plasma physics, laser optics, and entrepreneurship. We are seeking a computational plasma physicist to help model and test candidate coupling pathways among plasmas, lasers, maintained solid particles, highly charged ion production, and potential plasmonic enhancement of the light‑matter interaction. Our initial commercial focus is expanding access to heavy‑ion single‑event‑effects testing. We have completed I-Corps customer discovery and were invited by NSF to submit a Phase I SBIR proposal.

The Role: As a Founding Team Member and Lead Computational Plasma Physicist, you will serve as a critical thought partner to the technical founders and the commercial lead. You will own the multiscale computational program that guides architecture decisions from particle response and material release through host‑plasma effects, ECR capture and charge breeding, and extraction interfaces. This is not a purely academic modeling role. You will work directly at the boundary of theory and real‑world hardware, using models to design decisive experiments, define diagnostic requirements, and inform accelerator‑acceptance and downstream beamline interfaces as the source matures.

Key Responsibilities: Multiscale Modeling: Develop and validate a hierarchy of analytic, reduced‑order, kinetic, electromagnetic, and particle‑transport models. Apply PIC, MD, fluid, or hybrid methods selectively where their scale and assumptions are justified. Optical Response and Charge‑State Kinetics: Model material‑ and size‑dependent optical absorption, electron emission, heating, and material release. Separately model ECR capture, confinement, ionization kinetics, and charge‑state evolution to identify testable coupling pathways. Particle‑Plasma Interface Modeling: Simulate the charging, heating, vaporization, fragmentation, ionization, residence, and loss of candidate maintained‑particle feedstocks. Define stage‑specific efficiency metrics, including released‑material rate, ECR capture fraction, selected charge‑state current, and input power. Model Validation and Diagnostic Design: Work closely with the experimental team to compare predictions against calibrated particle‑residence measurements, optical and electrical plasma diagnostics, charge‑state analysis, current measurements, and energy‑distribution diagnostics. Core IP & Funding Architecture: Contribute key technical insights, simulation data, and architecture maps to corporate patent portfolios and competitive deep‑tech federal grant applications (e.g., SBIR Phase I/II, DARPA, and NSF solicitations).

Required Qualifications: Educational Background: Ph.D. Candidate (near completion) or recently awarded Ph.D. in Plasma Physics, Computational Physics, Nuclear Engineering, Computer Science, or a closely related quantitative field. Simulation Mastery: Proven experience with advanced computational plasma physics tools, electrodynamic solvers, or multi‑phase fluid‑kinetic packages, including model verification, experimental validation, uncertainty quantification, and reproducible scientific software. Domain Expertise: Deep theoretical and practical understanding of plasma chemistry, laser‑matter interactions, dusty plasmas, high‑vacuum physics, or advanced ion‑source physics (e.g., ECR, laser ion sources, EBIS, or SNICS systems).Experimental Rigor: Hands‑on experience or collaborative fluency with laboratory diagnostics of radiofrequency (RF), microwave‑driven, or laser‑produced plasmas. Mindset: A high‑conviction "Moonshot" mindset tailored for a fast‑paced, un‑siloed "Skunkworks" laboratory environment. Performance dictates corporate progress here.

Security Clearance: Preferred ability to obtain a U.S. Government Security Clearance (U.S. Citizenship typically required for downstream defense prime deployments).Preferred Extras Computational familiarity with ion optics, ECR capture and charge‑state kinetics, and matching source output to downstream accelerator acceptance. Experience with custom script implementation in Python, C++, or GPU‑accelerated environments for handling heavy diagnostic datasets. What We OfferDirect Equity Ownership: A true co‑founding technical stake in a venture tackling a multi‑billion‑dollar bottleneck with definitive, validating customer pull. High Impact Culture: The autonomy to build a technical pipeline from scratch alongside world‑class peers, completely free of corporate bureaucracy or traditional academic slow‑downs.