Kevin Fournier
Director, NIF User Office
National Ignition Facility
Kevin Fournier is the NIF User Office director. In this role, he is responsible for developing and implementing the strategy for support of the NIF user community, including generation of the integrated NIF facility use plan and experiment schedule, solicitation and evaluation of proposed experiments, management of experiment review and approval, and development and maintenance of user infrastructure. He works with the NIF programs, users, and the facility to operate NIF effectively as a world-class user facility. He also works closely with the High Energy Density (HED) and Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) councils, the Joint National Security Applications Council (JNSAC), the Technical Review Committee for Discovery Science, the NIF User Group, and other user organizations and representatives throughout the country to positively impact the successful execution of their program experiments on NIF.
In addition, Dr. Fournier helps develop, implement, and maintain a vision and strategy for execution of NIF experiments, solicits and champions experiments that have long-range revolutionary impact, and works to engage the programs and the user community to understand and realize new capabilities needed for long-term program priorities. Reporting to the NIF director, he is a key member of NIF’s management team, as well as a member of the NIF&PS Directorate senior management team.
He joined LLNL in 1994 as a graduate student in the Theory and Modeling Group in the Physics Directorate. He worked for several years on atomic theory and spectral modeling for x-ray lasers, astrophysical and magnetically confined plasmas, and high energy density plasmas. From 1999 to 2004 he worked on developing theoretical models for analyzing weapons effects and nuclear forensics. Since 2005, he has experimentally studied HED plasmas for basic science and weapons effects at laser facilities around the world. In 2011, he joined NIF&PS as the Nuclear Weapons Effects Integrated Experiments team leader and the National Security Applications program manager. In this role he has served as the main point of contact for National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Defense, and Homeland Security national security experiments at NIF and the OMEGA laser at the University of Rochester. Dr. Fournier received his Ph.D. in physics in 1997 and his M.Sc. in astrophysics in 1992 from Johns Hopkins University. He obtained his B.Sc. in physics and B.A.s in mathematics and history from Duke University in 1990.
