Mark J. Kushner is the George Haddad Collegiate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan. He bachelors’ degrees in nuclear engineering and astronomy from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his master’s and doctorate degrees in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology. He served on the technical staffs of Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Spectra Technology before joining the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986 where he was the founder professor of engineering and served in many administrative roles.
Kushner was the dean of engineering and the James and Katherine Melsa Professor at Iowa State University before joining the University of Michigan in 2008 as founding director of the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering. Kushner's research areas are low temperature plasmas, their fundamental properties and technological applications, in which he has extensively published. He has served on and chaired several National Academies policy advising studies, including the recently released 2020 Decadal Report on Plasma Science, as well as several Department of Defense and Department of Energy advisory panels. He is director of the DOE Low Temperature Plasma Science Center. Kushner has received several awards from professional societies and industry and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.