Dr Hurricane is an American plasma physicist, and a scientific leader of inertial confinement fusion efforts conducted on the National Ignition Facility, the world’s premiere research facility for laser-induced fusion. He received his PhD in Plasma Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1994, examining the kinetic theory and stability of certain perturbations in magnetospheric plasmas. He holds the title of Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, and since 2014 he has been Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In December 2022, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced that researchers at LLNL for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, sometimes termed ‘scientific breakeven’. Dr Hurricane has received numerous honours and awards, including the U.S. Department of Energy E.O. Lawrence Award for National Security and Nonproliferation (2009), The American Nuclear Society Edward Teller Award (2021), and the APS-DPP John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research (2022).