Leopoldo Soto Norambuena

Physicist and Director of the Research Center for Plasma Physics, Matter and Complexity (P2mc) at the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission (CCHEN). His work spans pulsed power, Z-pinches and plasma focus devices for fusion, miniaturized pulsed-plasma systems, and optical diagnostics. He pioneered Plasma Focus equiment miniaturization and led the design and construction of the smallest fusion-producing device in the world. He holds a PhD in Physics (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1993) and a PhD in Social and Political Processes in Latin America (Universidad de Artes y Ciencias Sociales, 2024). Since 2017 he has served as an honorary scientific advisor to the Future Commission of the Chilean Senate. He is President of the Chilean Physical Society, the representative of Chile to the Latin American Center of Physics (CLAF-UNESCO), and the founder and coordinator of the Nuclear Fusion Unit of CLAF. He has given invited talks at Imperial College London, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP, Trieste), Delhi University, among others. He is active in science communication, including a weekly segment on Tele13 Noche (Canal 13 TV). His honors include the Presidential Chair in Science of Chile (1999), election as a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom (2007), and two CCHEN Excellence Awards.