IUSTIN OUATU, 4th year DPHIL student

I am a final year DPhil student in the plasma physics group led by Prof. Peter Norreys.

I am working on developing new ways to diagnose the peak intensity of a laser pulse generated at O(10 PW) laser facilities. The first method is based on field ionization which happens when high-Z, ultra-rarefied, noble gases, are shot by extreme pulses of light. Following publication of this research in Physical Review E, in 2022, I have been working on novel solutions to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation to study the effect of non-dipole processes on field ionization.

Generally, I am interested in learning about numerical methods and statistical methods and to apply these to solve problems from the real world. I am particularly interested in developments in Deep Neural Networks and how to write code as optimized as possible. I am a constant user of HPC codes and machines and I sometimes add new functionalities to existing plasma simulation PIC codes.

I have graduated with an MPhys from Pembroke College, Oxford and my Master’s thesis, ‘’Bayesian model comparison for statistical differentiation of two forward models in Plasma Physics’’ has been supervised by Prof. Sam Vinko, Dr. Muhammad Kasim and Prof. Gianluca Gregori. Previously, I have graduated from Colegiul National, from Iasi, Romania, one of the best schools in Romania, founded in 1828. I represented this school at Physics Olympiads and various contests.

I enjoy doing and watching sports: I have been playing basketball for a long time now and I am an avid cyclist. My artistic inclination is related to photography. A cause about which I care is education and related aspects. I look up to people who can communicate in a correct way complex scientific ideas to general audiences.

Email: iustin.ouatu@physics.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Physics Page: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/ouatu