Omar Hurricane

Dr. Omar Hurricane is a Physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the thermonuclear and inertial confinement fusion design division ("AX"). He has also served as Program Element Leader of LLNL's AX Division since 2004 and previously worked as a Senior Scientist at the UCLA Institute of Plasma & Fusion Research. He received his B.S. in Physics and Applied Mathematics from Metropolitan State College Denver, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Hurricane’s research focuses on weapons physics, high energy density physics (HEDP) science, the theory of plasmas, and plasma instability. He has authored 44 journal publications and 54 conference papers, largely in the area of plasma physics and HEDP. He was the lead Secondary Designer for W87 warhead during most of its life extension program (LEP). He has received several awards and honors, including the U.S. Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for National Security and Nonproliferation in 2009 and four Department of Energy Defense Programs Awards of Excellence.