Omar Hurricane is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the thermonuclear and inertial confinement fusion design division.
[1] Hurricane completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under the supervision of Professor René Pellat in 1994.
Hurricane initially worked on modeling underground tests then in the Phoenix pulsed power project and as the W87 secondary lead designer during its first life extension program (LEP).
In 2012, Hurricane was asked by then-Lab director Parney Albright to lead an alternative ignition science team.
[2][3] He received the Edward Teller Award in 2021 for “Visionary scientific insights and leadership of National Ignition Facility (NIF) experiments resulting in the achievement of fuel gain, an alpha-heating-dominated plasma, and a burning plasma.” [4]