Joshua Burby
- Assistant Professor
- Physics
Prof. Burby is not currently recruiting new students or postdocs.
Current group members
Undergraduate students: I. Hollas, R. Agarwal
Graduate students: I. A. Maldonado, F. W. Pinto, D. Zarshenas
Postdocs: M. E. Ruth, N. M. Cao
Former group members
Graduate students: M. H. Updike
Postdocs: W. J. Barham
Contact Information
Biography
Professor Burby has undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Cornell University and Princeton University, respectively. He received postdoctoral fellowships from the US DOE (FES), the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (Viterbi), and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Feynman). Before coming to UT Austin, he was a staff scientist at Los Alamos in the Applied Mathematics and Plasma Physics group T-5.
Research
Professor Burby is a mathematical plasma physicist whose research centers on stellarator magnetic fusion. Stellarators confine hot plasma using geometrically- and topologically-complex three-dimensional magnetic fields. Burby uses intuition from symplectic geometry, dynamical systems theory and asymptotic analysis to answer foundational questions about stellarator fusion, such as “which magnetic fields confine individual charged particles?” or “what is the best way to compute stellarator equilibria?”
Centers and Institutes
- Institute for Fusion Studies
Education
- Cornell University, BS
- Princeton University, PhD
Publications
Y. Zhao, JWB, A. Christlieb, H. Lei, "Data-driven construction of a generalized kinetic collision operator from molecular dynamics," Phys. Rev. Lett. 135:185101 (2025)
JWB, I. A. Maldonado, M. Ruth, D. A. Messenger, L. Carbajal, "Nonperturbative guiding center model for magnetized plasmas," Phys. Rev. Lett. 134:175101 (2025)
D. A. Messenger, JWB, D. M. Bortz, "Coarse-graining Hamiltonian systems using WSINDy," Sci. Rep. 14:14457 (2024)
JWB, R. S. MacKay, S. Naik, "Isodrastic magnetic fields for suppressing transitions in guiding-centre motion," Nonlinearity 36:5884 (2023)
V. Duruisseaux, JWB, Q. Tang, "Approximation of nearly-periodic symplectic maps via structure-preserving neural networks," Sci. Rep. 13:8351 (2023)
JWB, E. Hirvijoki, M. Leok, "Nearly periodic maps and geometric integration of noncanonical Hamiltonian systems," J. Nonlin. Sci. 33:38 (2023)
JWB, T. J. Klotz, "Slow manifold reduction for plasma science," Comm. Nonlin. Sci. Numer. Simul. 89:105289 (2020)
JWB, N. Kallinikos, R. S. MacKay, "Some mathematics for quasisymmetry," J. Math. Phys. 61:093503 (2020)