Francesco Sciortino is Co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion. Originally from Italy, he did his undergraduate studies in Physics at Imperial College London. He entered the world of plasma physics working on a Z-pinch machine, and did his masters thesis at the TCV tokamak at EPFL in Switzerland before moving to MIT for his PhD. In 2021, he joined the Max Planck Society to work on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. While acting as one of the European scientific coordinators for tokamak research, he became progressively more interested in stellarators, inspired by the W7-X experiment. In January 2023, Francesco co-founded Proxima Fusion, a Munich-based startup working to bring stellarators and their promise of clean, safe and abundant energy to market. As the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima is designing the first generation of stellarator fusion power plants—the clearest, most robust path to commercial fusion. Event Panel: Fission, Fusion, and the Future of Nuclear Power Date & Time: Tuesday, 5 May 2026 at 8:30 AM PDT Please note that speakers provide their own biographies and headshots. Biographies represent the role of the person at the time of their engagement and are not independently verified by the Milken Institute.