Christine Coverdale, PhD

Christine A. Coverdale is a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where her career has focused on high-intensity laser-plasma interactions and their applications to national security science and inertial confinement fusion. Coverdale completed both her undergraduate and doctoral work at the UC Davis/Livermore program, earning her Hertz Fellowship in 1988. Her dissertation examined the interaction of intense subpicosecond laser pulses with underdense plasmas — a regime of particular relevance to laser-driven fusion and X-ray generation. At Sandia National Laboratories, she has built a long career in experimental plasma physics and pulsed-power science, reaching the level of distinguished member of the technical staff.