Spencer Gessner
Dr. Spencer Gessner is an Assistant Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. Dr. Gessner was previously a Staff Scientist at SLAC researching plasma wakefield acceleration at FACET-II, and a Fellow at CERN on the AWAKE proton beam-driven plasma acceleration experiment. Dr. Gessner earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University studying the acceleration of positron beams in plasma. Dr. Gessner is currently coordinating the US 10 TeV Wakefield Collider Design Study and is broadly involved in research on future colliders from Higgs Factories to future Energy Frontier machines.
Areas of Interest and Research
Collider physics
Plasma acceleration
Positron sources
Beam-laser interactions
Education
Awards & Honors
APS DPB Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Beam Physics Award (2017)
EuroNNAc Simon van der Meer Early Career Award in Novel Accelerators (2019)