Burrell received bachelor's degree in physics from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
in 1968. He then received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in physics from Caltech in 1970 and 1975 respectively. He then worked at General Atomics in fusion research with
tokamaks
A tokamak (; russian: токамáк; otk, 𐱃𐰸𐰢𐰴, Toḳamaḳ) is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being ...
, in particular DIII-D tokamak from General Atomics. Before that, he did research at the ISX-A and ISA-B Tokamak of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
He played an important role in the study of the
H-mode High-confinement mode, or H-mode, is an operating mode possible in toroidal magnetic confinement fusion devices mostly tokamaks, but also in stellarators.ASDEX tokamak in magnetically enclosed fusion plasmas and the underlying transport mechanisms, in particular the suppression of turbulence by the formation of shear currents. Burrell was involved in the discovery of quiet H-mode (quiescent H-mode) at DIII-D in 1999, which has the advantages of H-modes but no edge instabilities (edge localized modes, ELM). Burrell also developed methods for plasma diagnostics.
Honors and awards
Burrell is a fellow of the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
for "''experiments that show that sheared ExB flows can suppress turbulence and transport in tokamak plasmas and that such flows can spontaneously arise at the edge and in the core of tokamak plasmas.''".
In 2018, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for "''pioneering research, including key experimental advances and diagnostic development, that established the links between sheared plasma flow and turbulent transport, leading to improved confinement regimes for magnetized plasmas through turbulent transport reduction by sheared flow''".