As Lowercarbon’s Fusion Partner, Scott supports our mind-bending portfolio of fusion companies, sources new fusion industry investments, and connects industry, capital, and government to pave the way for fusion at scale.
It may not come as a surprise, then, that as a teenager, Scott loved math and science. In fact, a high school report on fusion energy was his first inspiration to pursue a career in fusion research. The assignment drove home that humanity would inevitably need a sustainable and abundant energy source to avoid running up against planetary limits. Growing up during the oil shocks of the early ‘80s confirmed that fossil fuels wouldn’t do the trick. Fusion was the ticket.
Prior to joining Lowercarbon, Scott worked at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from 2018 to 2025 in two key roles. From 2022 to 2025, he served as Senior Advisor and Lead Fusion Coordinator in the DOE Office of the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation, where he led a team in developing a DOE-wide strategy to accelerate the commercial viability of fusion energy. During this time, Scott was the key DOE point of contact, working with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to develop and advance U.S. Government interagency fusion policy. With OSTP, he co-organized two White House Summits on fusion energy, in 2022 and 2024. He was also the chief architect of the DOE Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program (announced in 2022 by the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences in the Office of Science) and the lead author of the DOE-wide Fusion Energy Strategy 2024. From 2018 to 2022, Scott served as a Program Director at ARPA-E, where he launched and managed over $100 million of fusion programs and projects. In addition, Scott and his ARPA-E Technology-to-Market Advisors helped focus attention on important requirements of fusion commercialization, such as, but not limited to, supporting costing-model development, cost targets for potential early markets, and technical metrics for achieving fusion energy breakeven and gain.
Prior to his time at the DOE, Scott was a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2002–2019), where he led experimental research spanning magnetic, magneto-inertial, and inertial confinement fusion. If you ever spot him in an Oppenheimer-style fedora, Scott’s put in the time to don the hat. He is the author or co-author of 85+ peer-reviewed publications, a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), and a co-recipient of the 2002 APS John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research. Scott has testified as an expert witness in three Congressional hearings on fusion energy (2016, 2022, 2023). He earned a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences (Program in Plasma Physics) from Princeton University and a B.S summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.
In his downtime, however, Scott is still a novice in the art of taking it easy. For example, Scott is an avid telemark skier (inbounds and backcountry) and mountain climber. You’ll find him often on the steeps at Taos Ski Valley, NM, or somewhere on a high peak in Colorado. From 2003–2019, he was a volunteer ski patroller at Pajarito Mountain in Los Alamos, NM, as well as an avalanche-safety instructor for most of that time. He loves cooking Chinese food, especially Sichuanese, and, even more so, eating it.
