Iván Vargas Blanco

Víctor Iván Vargas Blanco (born March 24, 1973) is Costa Rican plasma and nuclear fusion physicist. He is renowned for his work in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. Currently, as a professor and tenured researcher at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology, he heads the Plasma Laboratory for Fusion Energy and Applications that he founded in 2011.

On August 11, 2016, Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica recognized the contributions and leadership of Vargas-Blanco in the design, construction, and implementation of the first high temperature plasma magnetic confinement Stellarator type device to be built in Latin America. This fact made Costa Rica one of only eight countries in the world to possess this type of technology for nuclear fusion research. He is a promoter of plasma physics applications for medical, agricultural, and industrial uses in his countries.

On November 30, 2016, the government of Costa Rica honored Vargas-Blanco with the Clodomiro Picado Twight National Prize for Science and Technology. A few days later, on December 4, the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación chose Vargas-Blanco as one "News Character of The Year" in their Sunday Magazine edition.

On June 4, 2018, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano appointed Vargas-Blanco a member of the International Fusion Research Council (IFRC), to actively work on the development of the international cooperation in research on controlled nuclear fusion and its applications, as well as advising the IAEA on the activities of the nuclear fusion research and technology program. In October 2018, the Costa Rica Foreign Trade Promotion (Procomer) chose him as one of the ambassadors of the "Essential Costa Rica" Country Brand. Provided by Wikipedia