Six faculty receive 2025 Ted Kennedy Family Faculty Team Excellence Award

Six faculty affiliated with the Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (ZEUS) facility at the University of Michigan received the College of Engineering’s 2025 Ted Kennedy Family Faculty Team Excellence Award. The team members are: Milos Burger, Associate Research Scientist, Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences (NERS); Paul Campbell, Assistant Research Scientist, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE); Bixue Hou, Associate Research Scientist, ECE; Yong Ma, Assistant Research Scientist, NERS; Anatoly Maksimchuk, Research Scientist, ECE; and John Nees, Research Scientist, ECE.

Since late 2019, this team has worked together to design and construct the NSF-funded ZEUS facility, and brought it to successful operation as a user facility open to researchers around the world in 2024.

“ZEUS is presently the highest-power laser in the U.S., and its successful construction and operation is mainly due to the hard work and determination of this group of research faculty,” said Karl Krushelnick, the Henry J. Gomberg Collegiate Professor of Engineering and professor of NERS. 

The ZEUS facility is part of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS), which was home to the 300 terawatt laser known as HERCULES. HERCULES held the title of world’s most intense laser for many years. It was developed under the leadership of Nobel Prize laureate Gérard Mourou, who retired from the university in 2004.

ZEUS, with ultimate capability of 3 PW of power (10 times the power of HERCULES), will facilitate the first systematic exploration of relativistic plasma in quantum critical fields. Thanks to funding by NSF, researchers in the U.S. and abroad can use the facility for their own research.

“The work for the development and construction of the ZEUS facility fell largely on these six research scientists – who displayed exceptional insight and determination in developing this unique laser system, as well as overcoming unforeseen problems during its construction and commissioning,” said Krushelnick.

He added that since this laser operates at the frontier of laser technology, most of the daily problems that needed to be solved had never previously been addressed. This required exceptional engineering and scientific abilities during the design and construction of the laser, as well as flexibility and adaptability.

Team Members

John Nees is the Manager and Chief Scientist for Laser Systems. He was integral to the design and construction of all parts of the laser system as well as its testing. He is directly responsible for the overall design, development, assembly, and operation of the ZEUS laser system.

Anatoly Maksimchuk is the Manager and Chief Scientist for the three experimental Target Areas in the ZEUS facility. He oversaw the design and implementation of the large vacuum systems and laser beam transport and managed the assembly, integration, and operation of the target areas, along with their complex diagnostic systems.

Bixue Hou is the Engineering Manager, and responsible for the design and implementation of all of the complex electronic control systems for the Laser and Target Areas and their interface with the experimental and laser control rooms. His work impacts the safety systems for both users and equipment in the facility.

Yong Ma is a Target Area Scientist; he was also involved in the design and construction of the target areas, and in particular the construction of high energy electron beam diagnostic systems (multi-GeV electron spectrometers) and other associated diagnostics.

Milos Burger was involved in the design and construction of the laser systems and diagnostics, and also worked with Nees to design and implement new beam diagnostic tools to measure the properties of the amplified laser beams (which are only 30 fsec, or 30 x 10^-15 sec in duration).

Paul Campbell is a Target Area Scientist; he was involved in the design and construction of the target areas and their diagnostics along with Maksimchuk and Ma. 

Both Campbell and Ma have worked exceptionally closely with users of the ZEUS facility for the first year – ensuring that each experimental campaign by the external user groups was successful. 

In addition, about ten graduate students and a large number of undergraduates have participated in the design of the laser system modules, experimental design, and testing of components as research projects under the supervision of these six research scientists.