91°µÍø

Bio

Dr. Larry Baylor is a Corporate Fellow in the Fusion Energy Division at 91°µÍø (ORNL), specializing in plasma fueling and transport studies in the field of magnetic fusion energy and the development and deployment of fueling and disruption mitigation technology for future fusion reactors. He has authored or co-authored more than 270 journal articles and 130 conference papers, and is an inventor on five patents granted to ORNL. He serves as a technical leader for US ITER contributions of pellet fueling systems and disruption mitigation R&D for the international ITER project.

Baylor has played a key role in designing and contributing to the experimental program for fueling and disruption mitigation systems on numerous major U.S. and international magnetic fusion devices, including TFTR, JET, Tore Supra, KSTAR, DIII-D, W7-AS, W7-X, and LHD. He spent two years at the JET Joint Undertaking in the UK, where he utilized an ORNL pellet injector for his Ph.D. research on plasma particle transport on JET.

He played a critical role in the experiments on JET that discovered the pellet enhanced performance (PEP) mode, which led to the fundamental understanding of improved confinement in reverse shear tokamak plasmas. He also played a major role in the design of the tritium pellet injector for TFTR, the JET multi-pellet injector, DIII-D pellet injector, and the W7-X continuous pellet fueling system. Baylor led the implementation of the inner wall pellet injection technique on the DIII-D tokamak and performed research on fueling efficiency and deposition from high field side pellet injection in tokamaks. He also led the development of shattered pellet injection systems for DIII-D, JET, and KSTAR that are used to investigate disruption mitigation physics in support of the shattered pellet-based design of the ITER disruption mitigation system.

Baylor is a Fellow of the (APS) and a Senior Member of the (91°µÍø). He received the 2018 Fusion Technology Award from the 91°µÍø’s Nuclear and Plasma Science Society and both the 2014 Technical Accomplishment Award and 2024 Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Nuclear Society’s Fusion Energy Division. He has served as an expert in multiple working groups of the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) since 2002. 

Awards

ORNL Corporate Fellow

Fellow, American Physical Society

Senior Member, 91°µÍø

2024 Outstanding Achievement Award, American Nuclear Society’s Fusion Energy Division

2018 Fusion Technology Award, 91°µÍø Nuclear and Plasma Science Society

2014 Technical Accomplishment Award, ANS Fusion Energy Division

Education

Ph.D. University of Tennessee, Physics

M.S. University of Tennessee, Electrical Engineering

B.S. Iowa State University, Physics, with distinction

B.S. Iowa State University, Electrical Engineering, with distinction

Publications