Robert W. Conn (born December 1, 1942) is an American physicist, engineer, and academic administrator who served as president and chief executive officer of The Kavli Foundation from 2009 to 2020. He is dean emeritus of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and served as chair of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, an organization that promotes private support for basic scientific research.Robert W. Conn Biography Accompanying the Article, "The Role of Foundations and Societies in Supporting Frontier Research at Disciplinary Boundaries," by Robert W. Conn, American Institute of Physics
Conn is known for his contributions to fusion energy research and policy. In the 1970s, he co-founded the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and in 1986 founded the Institute of Plasma and Fusion Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also served on numerous federal advisory committees on fusion energy and chaired the Fusion Energy Advisory Committee of the United States Department of Energy.
As dean of engineering at UC San Diego from 1994 to 2009, Conn oversaw the expansion of several major research centers and programs, including the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), the Center for Wireless Communications, and the Whitaker Center for Biomedical Engineering. During his tenure, the engineering school was renamed the Jacobs School of Engineering following a major endowment from Irwin M. Jacobs and Joan Jacobs. In the private sector, Conn co-founded Plasma & Materials Technologies, Inc. in 1986 and served as managing director of Enterprise Partners Venture Capital from 2002 to 2008.
Education
Robert W. Conn was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1960 and attended Pratt Institute, also in Brooklyn, graduating with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering with minors in physics and mathematics (1964). He did his graduate work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where he received an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering (1965) and a Ph.D. degree in engineering science (1968)."Executive Profile of Robert W. Conn Ph.D." Company Overview of The Kavli Foundation, Bloomberg Among his advisors were Noel Corngold.
Career
University of Wisconsin-Madison
In 1970, Conn began his professional career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW), where he joined the nuclear engineering department as a visiting associate professor. He became associate professor in 1972 and full professor in 1975. It was at UW that Conn participated in some of the nation's earliest feasibility studies of nuclear fusion energy. Between 1972 and 1980, he published nearly 100 articles and reports on plasma physics and fusion technology. Along with four colleagues, Conn founded UW's Fusion Technology Institute in 1972. He also became the university's Romnes Faculty Endowed Chair Professor in 1978.Gerald Kulcinski, Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering and director, Fusion Technology Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Early Days In Bob Conn's Career at Wisconsin", Robert W. Conn 70th Birthday Symposium at the University of California, San Diego, May 9, 2013
Conn's early work came at a time when the federal government was eager to develop alternative sources of energy in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. He became one the first researchers to study the potential of nuclear fusion reactors, in which the fusion of hydrogen nuclei releases tremendous amounts of energy in the form of neutrons and energetic particles such as helium ions, the heat from which is then used to generate electricity. Nuclear fusion is the process that fuels stars, but triggering and sustaining nuclear fusion in a controlled manner on Earth so it can generate energy at a power plant is not yet a practical reality."What is Fusion?", ITER Website
Magnetic confinement reactor studies
In magnetic confinement reactors, hydrogen gas (usually a 50–50 mixture of two heavier isotopes of ordinary hydrogen, namely deuterium and tritium) is heated to very high temperatures (about 150 million degrees Celsius). At these high temperatures electrons separate from hydrogen nuclei and the gas becomes plasma, which is often referred to as the fourth state of matter, the others being solid, liquid and gas. By controlling, or confining, the flow of plasma in test reactors, engineers can cause hydrogen nuclei to collide and fuse – creating for short amounts of time a nuclear fusion reaction that generates heat. One of the unsolved challenges of controlled nuclear fusion energy is to sustain a reaction that generates more energy than what goes into just maintaining the operation of the reactor plasma itself."What is Fusion?", ITER Website
In his early work, Conn studied numerous aspects of plasma for fusion applications, including how it can be confined with magnetic fields, thereby increasing its density and the likelihood that atomic nuclei collide and fuse. Conn also studied the boundary conditions between the plasma and the chamber walls inside a reactor, how to design the so-called “blanket region” surrounding the plasma chamber so as to capture the fusion energy released as neutrons, and many other science and engineering challenges associated with practical reactor development.Robert W. Conn Biography Accompanying the Article, "The Role of Foundations and Societies in Supporting Frontier Research at Disciplinary Boundaries," by Robert W. Conn, American Institute of Physics Among the many reports for which Conn played a central role was the UWMAK-1 Study in 1973,"UWMAK-I - A Wisconsin Toroidal Fusion Reactor Design", Fusion Technology Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nov. 20, 1973 which became a tutorial on reactor design used by private sector companies including Westinghouse and McDonald Douglas. His key partner in these studies was Professor Gerald Kulcinski, Grainger Professor of Engineering at UW.Gerald Kulcinski, Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering and director, Fusion Technology Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Early Days In Bob Conn's Career at Wisconsin", Robert W. Conn 70th Birthday Symposium at the University of California, San Diego, May 9, 2013
Inertial confinement reactor studies
In inertial confinement reactors, lasers are fired at a pellet of fuel (often made from a combination of deuterium and tritium) with the goal of compressing, heating, and igniting the fusion fuel and creating a propagating burn through the compressed fuel plasma so as to burn approximately 30 percent before the compressed fuel, now in a very high temperature plasma state, itself disassembles."Inertial Confinement Fusion: How to Make a Star", National Ignition Facility and Photon Science, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
While at UW, Conn collaborated with his colleagues on a research program called SOLASE that studied the physics and engineering challenges of inertial confinement reactors. The work identified the key physics, engineering, and technology issues that need to be solved if inertial fusion is to become a practical energy source. Among the many ideas advanced at that time was the use of a low-pressure gas in the chamber to absorb the primary radiation burst that accompanies each micro-explosion (not the neutrons generated) and cause that very short burst of radiation energy to be re-radiated to the walls over a much longer time scale. The SOLASE program studied numerous technological challenges, ranging from delivering fuel pellets to the center of the device at a rate of one to five per second, capturing the energy from the fusion events, shielding the laser beams from pellet explosion debris, and capturing the neutrons that carry 80 percent of the energy so as to make a practical power system.Gerald Kulcinski, Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering and director, Fusion Technology Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Early Days In Bob Conn's Career at Wisconsin", Robert W. Conn 70th Birthday Symposium at the University of California, San Diego, May 9, 2013
Fusion-fission hybrid reactor studies
In fusion-fission hybrid reactors, high-energy fast neutrons generated by nuclear fusion can be used to convert fertile materials such as Thorium-232 or Uranium-238 into fissionable fuels for fission reactors such as Uranium-233 or Plutonium-239. The high-energy fusion-generated neutrons can also be used to trigger nuclear fission in traditional nuclear fuels such as Uranium-235. The hybrid reactor concept has a fusion reactor at the core and a surrounding “blanket” of fertile material, either Thorium-232 or Uranium-238. In a hybrid reactor, high-energy neutrons from fusion reactions are used to produce fissionable materials such as Uranium-233 or Plutonium-239 which would need then to be reprocessed and used as fuel in a fission nuclear power plant. One fusion hybrid plant can provide enough fuel for as many as five nuclear power plants of the same power.
Conn's work on inertial fusion hybrid reactors was conducted under the SOLASE-H program at the University of Wisconsin, and was supported by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)."SOLASE-H FTI Publications", Fusion Technology Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of California, Los Angeles
At the University of California, Los Angeles, Conn conducted research in plasma physics, nuclear fusion, materials science, and energy policy. He founded and directed the Institute of Plasma and Fusion Research in 1986, co-led the U.S. Department of Energy's ARIES fusion power plant design program with Farrokh Najmabadi, and helped establish the PISCES plasma-material interaction facility. He also led the international Advanced Limiter Test (ALT) program at Forschungszentrum Jülich and became chair of the Fusion Energy Advisory Committee in 1991.Stephen O. Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates and editor of Journal of Fusion Energy, and Mohamed Abdou, distinguished professor of engineering and applied science and director of the Fusion Science & Technology Center at UCLA, "Presentations on Robert W. Conn", Robert W. Conn 70th Birthday Symposium at the University of California, San Diego, May 9, 2013
University of California, San Diego
In 1993, Conn moved to the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) to become dean of its school of engineering, which in 1998 became the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering. He was also UC San Diego's Walter J. Zable Professor of Engineering Science. Conn led the Jacobs School through a period of rapid growth, during which numerous research centers were formed. These included the Center for Wireless Communications, the Whitaker Center for Biomedical Engineering, and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).Robert W. Conn Profile , The Kavli Foundation Today, the Jacobs School ranks 10th in the nation and 23rd in the world according to the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences conducted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy.2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities , ShanghaiRanking Consultancy At UC San Diego Conn also built partnerships between the university and private industry, establishing the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Transfer.Robert W. Conn Profile , The Kavli Foundation In the mid-1990s he served on a committee that reviewed fusion energy for the United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, also known as PCAST.Report of the Fusion Energy Panel, The U.S. Program of Fusion Energy Research and Development, The President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), July 1995