Profiles of the speakers that will participate in the FY2026 panel on the PPP environment
David Gates
Dr. David Gates, is the Chief Technology Officer at Thea Energy, a fusion technology company leveraging simpler, manufacturable hardware and software controls to create abundant energy. Since launching the company in 2022, David has helped to grow the Thea Energy team to over 70 employees and demonstrated the Company’s core technologies at fusion relevant scale at its headquarters in Kearny, NJ. Prior to co-founding Thea Energy, Dr. Gates was the Head of the Advanced Projects Department of PPPL and the stellarator physics leader at the Laboratory. He also held a joint appointment as a Senior Research Scholar at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. David previously led collaborative efforts with the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Greifswald, Germany and also on the Large Helical Device in Toki, Japan. He served as the Principal Investigator of the ARPA-E project “Stellar Simplification using Permanent Magnets”.
Prior to taking the role as stellarator leader, he was the leader of the NSTX Advanced Scenarios and Control topical science group as well as head of the Magneto-Hydrodynamic (“MHD”) Stability group. He also was a Physics Operator on NSTX. David did his undergraduate studies in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and did his graduate studies at Columbia University where he received his M.S., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Applied Physics. He was a research associate at Culham Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England from 1993-1997 where he worked on the COMPASS-D and START devices. David was a visiting professor at the National Institute for Fusion Science in Toki, Japan in 2010 and 2011. He became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2013.
Matt Miles
Matt Miles has more than 25 years of experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors, including oil and gas, process, nuclear fission and, most recently, fusion. Prior to joining Type One Energy as Senior Vice President of Marketing and External Affairs, Miles spent seven years with General Fusion, where he successfully leading efforts to craft public policy, establish DOE programs benefiting private sector companies (such as INFUSE and the Milestone Program), develop the global end-user market, and guide appropriate regulatory frameworks for the fusion industry.
Miles headed international sales for Generation mPower, a leading Small Modular Reactor company, after successfully establishing a nuclear supply division within Edgen Murray Corp., a large, multinational steel supply company. He earned a B.S. in International Trade and Finance from Louisiana State University.
Michael Segal
Michael Segal is Senior Director of Open Innovation at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, where he builds collaborative technical projects and relationships with public and private institutions. Since joining CFS in 2019, his team has leveraged tens of millions of dollars of non-dilutive capital into critical technical programs, and established CFS as the world’s premier private fusion partner.
Segal completed his PhD work on device physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and has published original peer-reviewed work on fusion, organic electronics, radio communication, and the cosmic microwave background. Segal also developed new technical and literary ecosystems and earned two National Magazine Awards as editor at Nature Nanotechnology and founding editor-in-chief at Nautilus.
Bibake Uppal
Bibake Uppal leads KF America, Kyoto Fusioneering’s (KF) Seattle-based U.S. arm, spearheading strategic growth and key partnerships across North America. Under his leadership, KF has launched a novel public-private joint venture in Canada, expanded its U.S. commercial and strategic relationships, established research agreements with U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories, and grown its North American investor base.
KF is a private company pioneering the technology and integrated systems for commercial fusion energy. With a global presence across Japan, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Canada, KF collaborates with fusion ecosystems worldwide to accelerate the practical path to fusion energy deployment.
Xaiver Vaisseau
Dr. Xavier Vaisseau is a senior scientist at Focused Energy, where he serves as the experimental lead for the U.S. office. He previously worked as a staff scientist at the French Atomic Energy Commission, where he conducted research on the megajoule-class LMJ laser system.
Aaron Washington
Dr. Washington is a Technical Project Manager for Tokamak Energy, Inc. responsible for managing the FPP Milestone program interface with the DOE national laboratories, managing the INFUSE submission and execution with the National labs and universities, and other US/DOE based grant programs. His previous career as a Principal investigator/project manager at Savannah River National laboratory for nearly 15 years has given an opportunity to work in a variety of disciplines including additive manufacturing (AM), nuclear waste characterization, solid state detector systems, fullerene chemistry, plant physiology, and superconductivity. While at Savannah River, he had 18 published papers, 15+ technical reports and given 15+ presentations to national conferences. He currently has 12 patents in process (10 issued, 2 in process) through work developed at SRNL. He has also earned his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification as of July 2017 and remains in good standing. He obtained his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry with specialization in material science from Florida State University, M.S. in Science and Technology Leadership from Brown University, and a B.S. in Chemistry from University of Florida.