Renewal Fuels, Inc., operating as American Fusion, has appointed Dr. John E. Brandenburg as Chief Technology Officer of its subsidiary Kepler Fusion Technologies. The appointment places a senior plasma physicist with over forty years of experience at the helm of the company's efforts to commercialize the Texatron™ aneutronic fusion platform.
Dr. Brandenburg's career includes senior scientific roles at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, The Aerospace Corporation, the Florida Space Institute at Kennedy Space Center, and Orbital Technologies Corporation. His work has spanned magnetically confined thermonuclear fusion, inertial confinement fusion pellet design, relativistic electron beam physics, and compact fusion propulsion experiments. He has held U.S. government security clearances at the Top Secret, Secret, Q, and SITK levels for sensitive national research programs.
Since February 2019, Dr. Brandenburg has served as lead scientist and technology architect at Kepler Aerospace Ltd. and Kepler Fusion Technologies, where he has been central to developing the Texatron™ compact toroidal fusion concept. Under his leadership, the company has advanced theoretical research, proof-of-principle plasma confinement validation, and fusion-based clean energy systems development.
Dr. Brandenburg holds a Ph.D. in Plasma Physics from the University of California, Davis, where his doctoral research focused on field-reversed plasma layers. He is the inventor or co-inventor on multiple issued U.S. patents covering plasma reactors, propulsion systems, hydrogen and ammonia processing, and persistent ionization plasma generation. His issued patents include U.S. Patent Nos. 6,205,769; 5,956,938; 7,037,484; 7,094,384; 8,101,032; 6,441,552; and 6,838,831.
He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and is the author of The GEM Unification Theory: Extending the Standard Model to Include Gravitation. Dr. Brandenburg is a Lifetime Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has received multiple professional awards for his scientific, technical, and educational contributions.
Brent Nelson, CEO of Kepler Fusion Technologies, stated that Dr. Brandenburg's decades of experience at premier national laboratories and his hands-on leadership in developing the Texatron™ platform make him uniquely qualified to guide the technology toward commercial deployment. Richard Hawkins, Chairman and CEO of Renewal Fuels, Inc., noted that the appointment represents a major step forward for American Fusion, with Dr. Brandenburg's technical vision and commercialization focus being invaluable as the company builds an infrastructure-grade fusion platform.
In his role as Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Brandenburg will oversee technology strategy, reactor physics, experimental validation, intellectual property development, and long-term commercialization readiness for the Texatron™ platform. For additional information on Dr. Brandenburg's background, his full curriculum vitae is available at https://kepleraerospace.com/about-us/dr-john-brandenburg-phd/. For more information about Kepler Fusion Technologies and its Texatron™ platform, please visit www.keplerfusion.com and americanfusionenergy.com.
