The scientist who designed the first fusion ignition shot is being honored today

On Friday, Nov. 13, a hybrid ceremony in Washington, D.C., will present the 2026 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Awards, and one of the nine recipients carries the most famous laser shot in modern fusion research. Andrea Kritcher of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is cited for design efforts that led to the first-ever achievement of fusion ignition. That shot fired on Dec. 5, 2022, and returned more energy from a fuel capsule than the lasers had delivered to it.

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Kritcher, who goes by Annie at the lab, works in the Inertial Confinement Fusion program at Livermore.

The Lawrence Award citation and the Nov. 13 ceremony

Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the 2026 class in October, and the Department of Energy’s award announcement lists Kritcher under Fusion and Plasma Sciences. Her citation honors exceptional design efforts leading to the first-ever achievement of fusion ignition in the laboratory, and it points to the work’s impact on national missions, the private sector and academic fusion programs. The award dates to 1959 and goes to mid-career American scientists and engineers across nine categories. Wright said the winners’ work is “translating groundbreaking research into real-world capabilities.” The ceremony on Nov. 13 is broadcast live online, with a recording available afterward. The announcement does not state a medal design or a cash amount.

Eight other scientists share the class. Eric Schelter of the University of Pennsylvania was recognized for separations chemistry on energy-critical metals, Patrick Chain of Los Alamos National Laboratory for microbiome genomics, and Samuel Williams of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for high-performance computing performance modeling. Thomas Epps III of the University of Delaware was cited for polymer upcycling and battery membranes, Gregg Beckham of the National Laboratory of the Rockies for converting biomass and waste plastics, and Charles Polly of Fermilab for the Muon g-2 measurement. Michael Reed of the Nevada National Security Site was honored for AVID, a nuclear-emergency software tool, and Lijuan Ruan of Brookhaven National Laboratory for detectors on the STAR experiment.

The Dec. 5, 2022 shot: 2.05 megajoules in, 3.15 out

The numbers behind the citation are specific. According to the Energy Department’s announcement of the result, the National Ignition Facility delivered 2.05 megajoules of laser energy to a target on Dec. 5, 2022, and the fusion reaction gave off 3.15 megajoules. Livermore’s own ignition page describes the method: up to 192 laser beams fire into a centimeter-sized hohlraum, generating x rays that implode the fuel capsule.

Lab Director Kim Budil said at the time that crossing the threshold was the vision driving 60 years of dedicated pursuit. Then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called it a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the facility.

Ignition has since been repeated and extended. The same Livermore page lists a record 8.6 megajoules from 2.08 megajoules of laser energy on April 7, 2025, a target gain of 4.13, and a 7.9 megajoule shot on June 20, 2026 that it counts as the 11th ignition.

John Lindl, a senior scientist at the facility, is quoted on the Livermore page saying that nature does not give up her secrets easily. The line fits a program that took decades and thousands of people, which is why a single design physicist’s award carries an unusual amount of shared credit in the way the lab talks about it.

Kritcher’s part in designing the ignition experiments

The University of California’s report on the UC-affiliated winners says Kritcher led the physics design of several major experiments at the facility: the first burning fusion plasma in 2021, shots that met the Lawson criterion later that year, and the December 2022 shot that reached ignition with a target gain above one. She now leads work on higher-yield designs that build on that platform. Her own words, quoted there, are that achieving fusion ignition was a monumental goal that generations of scientists and engineers worked toward, and she called the award a surprise and an honor.

In 2023, Time named her to its list of the 100 most influential people, and an insideHPC report described her as the principal designer of the ignition experiment and leader of the integrated modeling team in Livermore’s fusion program. In the same report she credited a multi-decade team effort, saying each contribution was needed to reach the milestone, and she said the Time recognition showed the world was watching and agreed on the lab’s mission. The award announcement itself places her in the fusion and plasma category alongside no other winner, so the 2026 class has exactly one fusion scientist among its nine.

From summer intern to American Physical Society fellow

Her path ran through the same lab for more than two decades. Kritcher joined Livermore in 2004 as a summer intern while studying nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan, returned as a Lawrence Graduate Scholar, earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, and later held a Lawrence Postdoctoral Fellowship at the lab. Honors before this one include the 2022 John Dawson Award in plasma physics and election as an American Physical Society fellow in 2023.

The open item after Nov. 13 is the work her citation says is still unfolding. The Energy Department’s announcement credits her designs with shaping both public-sector missions and the private fusion industry, and the Livermore record of ignition shots now runs to at least 11, the latest on June 20, 2026.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.