Dr. Ajay Chandrarajan Jayalekshmi

Biography

Ajay C.J. is a research fellow at the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore since September 2025. He obtained his PhD in Fusion Plasma from Ecole Polytechnic Federal de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland on December 2020. He worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Warwick, UK from 2021 to 2023, founded the robot vacuum research company Poel Robotics LLP in Thiruvananthapuram, India in 2024, and worked as a researcher at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) from 2024 to 2025.

Research Interests

• Broad research Interests: plasma physics, turbulence, magnetic confinement nuclear fusion and autonomous navigation.
• Current research focus: plasma turbulence theory, gyrokinetic simulations, AI surrogate transport models, integrated modelling of tokamaks.

Selected Publications

• Ajay C.J., M.J. Pueschel, Justin Ball, Stephan Brunner, David R Hatch and Tobias Görler, “Turbulence saturation via fine-scale profile shearing in fusion plasmas”, Nuclear Fusion, DOI 10.1088/1741-4326/ae3fae, 2026.

• Ajay, C. J., B. McMillan, A. Bokshi, A. di Siena, M. J. Pueschel, and J. R. Ruiz, “Gyrokinetic investigation of toroidal alfvén eigenmode (TAE) turbulence”, AIP Advances, vol. 14, no. 7, p. 075 120, 2024.

• Ajay C.J., B.F. McMillan, and M.J. Pueschel, “On the impact of temperature gradient flattening and system size on heat transport in microtearing turbulence”, Nuclear Fusion, vol. 63, no. 6, p. 066 024, 2023.

• Ajay C.J., S. Brunner, and J. Ball, “Effect of collisions on non-adiabatic electron dynamics in ITG-driven microturbulence”, Physics of Plasmas, vol. 28, no. 9, p. 092 303, 2021.

• Ajay C.J., S. Brunner, B. McMillan, J. Ball, J. Dominski, and G. Merlo, “How eigenmode self-interaction affects zonal flows and convergence of tokamak core turbulence with toroidal system size”, Journal of Plasma Physics, vol. 86, no. 5, p. 905 860 504, 2020.