MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
The Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a university research center for the study of plasmas, fusion science and technology. It has more than 250 researchers, staff, and students across 7 labs, and is one of MIT's largest research labs.
It was originally founded in 1976 as the Plasma Fusion Center at the request and with the collaboration of the United [States Department of Energy|U.S. Department of Energy]. The original grant was for construction and operation of a tokamak reactor Alcator A, the first in a series of small, high-field tokamaks, followed by Alcator C and Alcator C-Mod.
MIT's most recent tokamak, Alcator C-Mod, ran from 1993 to 2016. In 2016, the project pressure reached 2.05 atmospheres—a 15 percent jump over the previous record of 1.77 atmospheres with a plasma temperature of 35 million degrees C, sustaining fusion for 2 seconds, yielding 600 trillion fusion reactions. The run involved a 5.7 tesla magnetic field. It reached this milestone on its final day of operation.
In 2018, the PSFC began developing a conceptual design for the SPARC tokamak in collaboration with Commonwealth Fusion Systems. SPARC intends to use new YBCO superconducting magnets in order to achieve net fusion energy in a compact device.
From August 18th to the 23rd, 2025, Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) hosted their sixth summer program; This program originally began in August 2019. The program was designed to help graduate students, post-doctorates, and researchers build, practice, and develop the skills to apply performance computing and data science tools to fusion energy research.