Full Name
Livia Casali
Job Title
Assistant Professor, Zinkle Faculty Fellow & ITER Research Scientist Fellow
Company
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Speaker Bio
Livia Casali is a Zinkle Faculty Fellow and an Assistant Professor of Plasma Physics and Fusion Technology at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville.
She is an internationally recognized expert in plasma edge physics, divertor technology and core–edge integrated solutions. Her research addresses one of the central challenges for fusion energy: integrating the hot plasma core with the cold material edge, by combining cutting-edge experiments at fusion facilities worldwide with state-of-the-art computational modeling. More recently, she has been working on integrating plasma science with fusion neutronics and technology advancing the path to commercial fusion energy.
Over the course of her career, Casali has led innovative experiments and developed advanced modeling tools. In recognition of these contributions and her scientific leadership, she was awarded the 2025 Katherine E. Weimer Award by the American Physical Society for outstanding achievement in plasma research and exemplary leadership.
In 2022, she received the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Faculty Award for fusion development, and was named an ITER Research Scientist Fellow. She has served on numerous advisory and leadership bodies within the fusion community, including the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Subcommittee for international benchmarking, as an international expert to the ITER Baseline Research Plan, and as a technical expert and organizer of the U.S. Fusion Burning Plasma Roadmap. She is an executive member of the University Fusion Association, and chair of the Program Committee for the International Sherwood Conference on Fusion Theory 2026.
Prior to joining UTK, she was a staff scientist at General Atomics, where she worked on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility and led the core–edge integration research area. Casali earned her Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, where she conducted research on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. For this work, she received the EPS/PPCF Poster Prize from the European Physical Society and the Pietro Blaserna Prize from the Italian Physical Society.
She is an internationally recognized expert in plasma edge physics, divertor technology and core–edge integrated solutions. Her research addresses one of the central challenges for fusion energy: integrating the hot plasma core with the cold material edge, by combining cutting-edge experiments at fusion facilities worldwide with state-of-the-art computational modeling. More recently, she has been working on integrating plasma science with fusion neutronics and technology advancing the path to commercial fusion energy.
Over the course of her career, Casali has led innovative experiments and developed advanced modeling tools. In recognition of these contributions and her scientific leadership, she was awarded the 2025 Katherine E. Weimer Award by the American Physical Society for outstanding achievement in plasma research and exemplary leadership.
In 2022, she received the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Faculty Award for fusion development, and was named an ITER Research Scientist Fellow. She has served on numerous advisory and leadership bodies within the fusion community, including the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Subcommittee for international benchmarking, as an international expert to the ITER Baseline Research Plan, and as a technical expert and organizer of the U.S. Fusion Burning Plasma Roadmap. She is an executive member of the University Fusion Association, and chair of the Program Committee for the International Sherwood Conference on Fusion Theory 2026.
Prior to joining UTK, she was a staff scientist at General Atomics, where she worked on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility and led the core–edge integration research area. Casali earned her Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, where she conducted research on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. For this work, she received the EPS/PPCF Poster Prize from the European Physical Society and the Pietro Blaserna Prize from the Italian Physical Society.
Speaking At
