Francesco Sciortino

At-a-Glance

Co-Founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, a European fusion energy company.
Co-founded Proxima Fusion, spun out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 2023.
Earned a PhD in plasma physics and fusion energy from MIT in 2021.
Serves as a full professor at Sapienza University of Rome.
Conducted PhD research on Alcator C-Mod and DIII-D tokamaks, focusing on reduced models, optimization, and Bayesian inference for fusion.
Worked on divertor spectroscopy and numerical optimization on the ASDEX-Upgrade tokamak and W7-X stellarator at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

Biography

Francesco Sciortino is the Co-Founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, a European fusion energy company that spun out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 2023. At Proxima Fusion, he leads efforts towards developing fusion power plants based on quasi-isodynamic stellarators, viewing the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) as a robust path to fusion energy. He believes Europe holds significant advantages in stellarator R&D.