At Marietta College, classes are small and professors often know students by name. Behind the quiet campus setting, physics professor Joseph Smith was running simulations to understand the extreme forces of the universe. With the help of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), he studied what happens when lasers thousands of times more powerful than sunlight collide with microscopic targets—research that can shape the field of plasma physics and student careers.
“Without OSC, this research wouldn’t have been possible at Marietta,” Smith said. “It shows how much smaller institutions—and their students—can accomplish when they have access to these kinds of resources.”
Smith’s research focused on what happens when ultra-intense lasers strike matter, creating plasma, which is the superheated state in which electrons are stripped from atoms. These conditions, similar to those inside stars or nuclear fusion experiments, last only fractions of a second but unleash extreme forces.
Physicists use lasers like these as a way to recreate in the lab some of the most extreme conditions in the universe. By doing so, they can probe the physics of solar flares, supernovae, and other astrophysical events—or test ideas that could one day make fusion power a practical energy source.
Experiments at research facilities can directly produce these plasmas, but there are limits.
“Each laser shot is expensive and over in a fraction of a second,” Smith said. “With computational simulations, we can slow the physics down, change the parameters, and really see what’s happening inside the plasma.”
To take on that challenge, Smith turned to OSC’s high performance computing clusters. Running these simulations required processing millions of particles across thousands of time steps, something only possible through parallel computing at scale. OSC provided the capacity to handle those calculations in detail, enabling Smith to explore scenarios that would have been impossible on campus systems.
He modeled collisions where lasers thousands of times brighter than the sun concentrated on targets no wider than a human hair strand. In those fleeting moments, rapidly changing electric fields did most of the work of accelerating particles to relativistic speeds, while magnetic fields twisted and compressed around the plasma.
By running simulations in one, two, and three dimensions, Smith uncovered how complexity impacted the results. In simple one-dimensional models, outcomes appeared neat and predictable. But as dimensions increased, plasma revealed hidden instabilities—magnetic fields wrapping, compressing, and releasing energy in chaotic bursts. Those insights gave experimentalists a clearer roadmap of what to expect when firing real lasers in the lab.
Smith’s commitment to open science meant that the work didn’t stop at the publication stage. He shared every input, output, and analysis file through Zenodo, turning the project into a resource for the global research community.
“It’s important that our work doesn’t sit behind a paywall or in a drawer,” Smith said. “By sharing everything openly, we make it easier for others to reproduce our results and for students new to the field to learn how this kind of research is done.”
The datasets have since been downloaded hundreds of times, used by plasma physicists and educators alike.
“Open data makes the science stronger, and OSC gave us the platform to make it happen,” Smith said.
The project culminated in a peer-reviewed publication in Physics of Plasmas earlier this year. The work was a team effort that included collaborators such as Professor Scott Feister of California State University Channel Islands and Marietta undergraduate Madeline Aszalos, now pursuing a master’s degree in health and medical physics at the University of Toledo. When Smith promoted the article on LinkedIn, he made a point to thank OSC for enabling the research.
Smith’s dual focus on cutting-edge science and student opportunity also earned him the Doc Brown Young Scientist Award from the American Physical Society’s Eastern Great Lakes Section. The award recognized his commitment to working with undergraduate students on significant research projects.
One of those students was Lily Daneshmand, who joined the project as a junior.
“I didn’t even know plasma physics was a field until I started this project,” she said. “Once I saw how much there was to explore, I knew I had found something I wanted to keep pursuing.”
As she gained experience, the combination of Marietta’s mentorship opportunities and OSC’s computing resources helped her discover the kind of scientist she wanted to become.
“I went to Marietta for the small-school environment,” Daneshmand said. “But through OSC, I had the chance to do research on the scale of a major university. That combination helped me realize how much I enjoyed plasma physics and set me on the path I’m pursuing now.”
Her work eventually took her beyond the classroom. Daneshmand presented the team’s findings at the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics meeting.
“Standing next to researchers from big universities and knowing I had something to contribute was incredible,” she said. “That experience gave me confidence that I could succeed in graduate school.”
Daneshmand is now pursuing graduate study at the University of Iowa, building on the foundation she gained through Smith’s mentorship and her experience using OSC.
Smith has since joined The College of Wooster as an assistant professor of statistical and data sciences, where he continues building on the plasma physics research he began at Marietta. His reliance on OSC hasn’t changed—advanced computing remains central to his work.
For Smith, the story underscores a larger truth: that access to high performance computing levels the playing field for smaller colleges. Faculty can pursue ambitious projects, and students can gain experiences that launch careers, regardless of their institution’s size.
“One project led to a paper, an award, and a student discovering her career path,” Smith said. “That’s the kind of impact that happens when resources like OSC are available to everyone across Ohio.”
Written by Lexi Biasi
The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) addresses the rising computational demands of academic and industrial research communities by providing a robust shared infrastructure and proven expertise in advanced modeling, simulation and analysis. OSC empowers scientists with the services essential to making extraordinary discoveries and innovations, partners with businesses and industry to leverage computational science as a competitive force in the global knowledge economy and leads efforts to equip the workforce with the key technology skills required for 21st century jobs.
