Dr. Erik P. Gilson is a Principal Research Physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He completed his S.B. in Physics at M.I.T. in 1993 and his Ph.D. in Physics at U.C. Berkeley in 2001, and he has been at PPPL since 2001. His research interests include: the basic physics of non-neutral plasmas in Penning traps and in Paul traps, applications of non-neutral plasma methods and techniques to accelerator beam non-linear dynamics, ion-beam-driven heavy-ion-fusion, and studies of edge physics in tokamaks and stellerators using impurity powder injection. Dr. Gilson also works on liquid metal MHD experiments at PPPL that are designed to study the physics of accretion disks. The goal of the experiment is to unambiguously identify the magnetorotational instability in a laboratory setting.