Matthew Colin Thompson

Matthew Thompson is Vice President of Systems Engineering at Zap Energy, a company seeking to commercialize sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch technology for fusion energy production. He is also past Chair of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics and a past Chair of the APS Committee on Careers and Professional Development. He has personally mentored dozens of STEM students on professional issues, made career-oriented speaking appearances at places like Stanford University, co-founded a major mentoring program called IMPact (https://impact.aps.org/), and writes about career issues for physical scientists on his website http://www.prosperousphysicist.com/ and in his books http://amazon.com/author/mcthompson. Dr. Thompson completed a bachelor’s degree with honors in physics from Stanford University, and both a MS and PhD in experimental plasma physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduating, his difficult transition off the academic career path to first Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and then private industry inspired him to help others on similar journeys. Dr. Thompson transitioned to private industry in 2007 with his first Senior Scientist position at Tri Alpha Energy working on energy conversion and magnetic sensor technologies. He rose through the ranks to become Director of Physics at TAE Technologies, Inc. a diversified company working on nuclear fusion, related power handling and particle accelerator technologies, and new medical devices for cancer treatment. He led the 50 scientists and technical personnel of TAE’s Physics Division in their work on experimental operations, pulsed power systems, high-power neutral beams, plasma diagnostics, data acquisition, analysis, and data science. After TAE, Dr. Thompson spent two years developing sensors and embedded data processing systems for advanced aerospace applications at BAE Systems, Inc. In 2021 he returned to fusion research and development as Director of Systems Engineering at Zap Energy, Inc.