Tammy Ma is the Deputy Principal Associate Director for Science & Technology, for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) & Photon Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Just prior, she served as the founding Director of the Livermore Institute for Fusion Technology (LIFT). Tammy was a member of the team at the NIF that achieved fusion ignition in December 2022 — an experiment that, for the first time in history, released more energy than it took to drive it. Tammy currently sits on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Advisory Committee, providing advice to DOE on a variety of complex scientific and technical issues. She was a co-author of the 2022 DOE Long Range Plan for Fusion, and chaired the DOE Inertial Fusion Energy Basic Research Needs. Tammy has authored or co-authored over 200 journal publications, and has written for Scientific American, has been featured on 60 Minutes, and in 2024 delivered a TED talk on the potential of fusion energy. She was recently named a Washington Post Next 50, one of the 50 people shaping our society in 2026.