McCarthy announced as new editor of ANS fusion journal

McCarthy

A key moment: "Fusion energy is receiving significant attention and investment in both the private and public sectors," McCarthy wrote in her statement of editorial approach. "There are significant [research] gaps that need to be filled . . . and Fusion Science and Technology is the perfect vehicle for publishing the important work that is going on in the public and private sectors to enable the deployment of sustainable, competitive fusion energy."

McCarthy is an internationally recognized leader and researcher who most recently has served as director of the U.S. ITER Project Office, which is managed by ORNL with partner labs Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Savannah River National Laboratory. Prior to her current position, McCarthy served in a variety of roles across Oak Ridge and Idaho National Laboratories, the Department of Energy, and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, building expertise across many facets of the nuclear sector.

"We are thrilled to welcome Dr. McCarthy into the role of FS&T editor-in-chief," said John Fabian, director of ANS's Publications Department. "Her expertise and leadership are invaluable qualities that will serve the journal and the fusion research community well in this key moment for the technology's development."

About the journal: FS&T is one of three journals published by ANS, along with Nuclear Science and Engineering (NST; published since 1956) and Nuclear Technology (NT; published since 1965). FS&T spun out of NT in 1981 as Nuclear Technology-Fusion, before going by the title Fusion Technology from 1984 to 2001.

It publishes eight issues per year with a scope encompassing a broad range of fusion topics, including fusion plasma physics, engineering, and enabling science and technology; fusion materials science; tokamaks, stellarators, and next-step burning plasma experiments; target fabrication and inertial confinement fusion science and applications; and tritium science and technology, among others.

McCarthy joins a line of technical editors stretching back to George Miley (1981-2001) and including Nermin Uckan (2001-2017) and Leigh Winfrey (2018-2025). Arkady Serikov, a senior scientific researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, has been an associate editor for FS&T since 2021 and has served as interim editor since Winfrey's departure in June 2025.

ANS members have electronic access to all three journals as part of their membership.