Xavier Garbet

Xavier Garbet (b. 1961) is a theoretical plasma physicist and a professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He is currently appointed as the Temasek Chair in Clean Energy, as his professorship was established by a $6 million endowment from Singapore's state investment firm, Temasek Holdings. This appointment aims to support a magnetic confinement fusion research and manpower training program at NTU for clean energy development in Singapore.

Early life and career In 1982, Garbet received a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Paris-Sorbonne University. He then earned a Master's degree in plasma physics from Paris-Saclay University. Subsequently, he earned a PhD degree in theoretical and high-energy physics in 1988 and a Habilitation à diriger des recherches (French habilitation) in 2001 from Aix-Marseille University.

Garbet was hired by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 1988. He was a visiting scientist at General Atomics from 1994 to 1995 and led a plasma transport modelling task force at the Joint European Torus from 2001 to 2004.

In 2019, he was awarded the Fernand Holweck Medal and Prize by the Société Française de Physique.

In 2022, Garbet was awarded the Hannes Alfvén Prize for his theoretical contributions to the dynamics of magnetically confined fusion plasmas.