Staff

Mr. Bayer has over 20 years of strategic and operational Management experience within the industry, where his experience focused on Program and Project Management for large scale OEM manufacturing. His area of expertise are complex Material Flow and Operations Engineering (facility launch and readiness) in combination with financial forecasting and cost management (strategic and operational).  His current interests are the launch and management of mid- and large-scale scientific user laboratories in the area of plasma physics and optical sciences.

Research area keywords: magnetized high energy density physics, laboratory astrophysics, laser-plasma accelerators

Research profile on Google Scholar:    https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KWy14GEAAAAJ&hl=en

Paul earned his PhD in Applied Physics at Michigan after studying physics at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Before joining the ZEUS project, he spent two years as a fellow supported by the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences postdoctoral research program. His research focuses on particle acceleration and magnetic field generation during intense laser-plasma interactions.

After receiving her PhD in laser physics from Rostov State University Dr. Kalinchenko worked as Assistant and Associate Professor in Moscow Technical University of Communication and Informatics and South Russian State Polytechnic University. Since 2002, Dr. Kalinchenko has worked at the University of Michigan, COE EECS – ECEDivision as an Assistant Research Scientist and Laser Engineer. In 2014, she moved to ELI-Beamlines Prague and then returned to Michigan in 2019 to join the ZEUS project.

Research areas: Plasma Physics, high-power short-pulse lasers, warm-dense matter

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=wbkZHmYAAAAJ

Dr. Andrew McKelvey received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences from the University of Michigan in 2019. Andrew completed his dissertation research at Lawrence Livermore National laboratory, where he studied transport properties of hot and warm-dense matter created with high-power short-pulse laser and XFEL sources. He joined the ZEUS team in 2019 as a Postdoctoral fellow and continued as a Target Area Link Scientist in 2022. His work focuses on high-power laser system design, optomechanical design, and vibrational stability analysis.

Research Areas:  Quantum optics, nonlinear optics, quantum information science, laser physics

Lauren is a UM alumna, and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics.  As an undergraduate student, Lauren worked as a research assistant in an experimental condensed matter laboratory, using both ultrafast linear and nonlinear techniques in time-resolved ultrafast laser spectroscopy, in order to study the structure and dynamics of particular synthesized materials.  Following her graduation, Lauren conducted her own experiments in a similar laser laboratory, aiming to improve the efficacy of traditional photodetection methods.  Lauren’s passion for and educational background in quantum and nonlinear optics prompted her to pursue a career in laser physics and engineering, both within academia, as well as the industrial product development sector.  

Most recently, Lauren worked at the world’s first commercial laser manufacturer, Spectra-Physics; as a Laser Engineer there, she led group-wide efforts to increase the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of optical components, subjected to high-intensity ultraviolet pulsed power beams; Lauren routinely performed, analyzed, and revised the designs of laboratory LIDT experiments.  Her unique blend of professional experience in academic and industrial electro-optical engineering and interest in laser physics brought Lauren back to Michigan, where she is thrilled to embark on a journey as a Laser/Laboratory Engineer on the Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort (ZEUS) pulse laser System.  Go Blue!

Research areas: turbulent multiphase flow from nozzle injection, high spatiotemporal near-field speckle imaging, X-ray phase contrast imaging, high performance computing, laser system control

Research profile on Google Scholar.


Dr. Qing Zhang earned his doctorate degree in Power Machinery and Engineer at Tongji University, where he
studied fuel spray and combustion in automotive field. From 2018, Qing joined the Time Resolved Research Group located in the Advanced Photon Source Department at Argonne National Laboratory, starting as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and then continuing as an Assistant Mechanical Engineer. Dr. Zhang’s work focused on time-resolved experiments, image processing and high power computing. He studied turbulent multiphase flow and designed the latest generation of a high-efficiency, low-emission nozzle by utilizing high spatiotemporal x-ray imaging.

Qing recently joined the ZEUS project and CUOS group of University of Michigan. His focus will be on developing and updating the laser system control system and safety system, establishing a data management system and running high performance computing.