Co-Founder and CEO

Dr. Francesco Sciortino is CEO and co-founder of Proxima Fusion. After his studies at Imperial College and EPFL, Francesco did research on magnetic confinement fusion during his PhD in plasma physics and fusion energy at MIT. He then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, where he acted as one of the European coordinators for tokamak research. It was at IPP that Francesco progressively shifted his focus from tokamaks to stellarators, recognizing breakthroughs in stellarator research in 2022 and defining a new path to faster commercialization of fusion energy.

Co-Founder and COO

Dr. Lucio Milanese is COO and co-founder of Proxima Fusion. Prior to co-founding Proxima Fusion, Lucio was a Senior Advisor at McKinsey, supporting top private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and companies on fusion and due diligence. He holds a PhD in theoretical plasma physics from MIT, where he specialized in plasma turbulence and tokamaks, before shifting his focus to QI stellarators to develop Proxima Fusion.

Co-Founder and Chief Scientist

Dr. Jorrit Lion is Chief Scientist and co-founder of Proxima Fusion. Previously, during his time as a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), Jorrit worked to answer the question of how a stellarator based on the Wendelstein 7-X concept would need to be designed for commercial power production. His vision offered the basis for Proxima’s approach to stellarator optimization at the interface of physics, engineering and economics. At Proxima, he is currently responsible for the design of the demonstrator device Alpha, which aims to start operations in 2031 and showcase net energy in a stellarator for the first time.

Co-Founder and Chief Engineer

Martin Kubie is Chief Engineer and co-founder of Proxima Fusion. Martin has architected and led engineering projects for companies at the frontier of science and technology including in Formula 1 for McLaren Racing and at the Google X spin-off Wing, deploying one of the world's largest fleets of autonomous delivery drones. At Proxima, Martin is now leading the engineering teams that combine rapid prototyping with simulation- and ML-driven design.

Chief Manufacturing Officer

Barrington “Baz” D’Arcy brings over 25 years of global manufacturing leadership to his role as Chief Manufacturing Officer at Proxima Fusion. He most recently served as Chief Operations Officer at CMR Surgical, where he led cross-functional teams to scale complex medical robotics systems. Before that, Baz played a pivotal leadership role in SpaceX’s evolution, significantly ramping up rocket production and testing over his tenure as Senior Director for Production. His career began at BMW, where he held multiple leadership roles in manufacturing engineering and quality management. Baz now drives Proxima’s industrialization strategy, developing and scaling the complex manufacturing systems required to build stellarator fusion power plants.

Head of Communications

Maria leads Proxima’s brand and communications team. German by nationality, she worked in Brussels, Beijing, New York, London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, garnering extensive experience in building and scaling international communications programs for both startups and multinational tech companies. Before joining Proxima, Maria built the marketing team at Spacemaker and post-acquisition scaled it to bring to market Autodesk’s first AI product. She also worked with several startups across Europe on their brand strategy and spent a decade agency-side at Edelman and FTI Consulting.

Co-Founder and Head of Labs

Jonathan Schilling is Head of Labs and co-founder of Proxima Fusion. Jonathan has hands-on experience in building advanced models for magnetic confinement fusion experiments, with expertise including experimental plasma physics, theoretical plasma physics, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Prior to co-founding Proxima Fusion, Jonathan was a Doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), where he analyzed plasma behavior in the record-breaking experiments of Wendelstein 7-X.

Head of People

Marija Kose leads the People team at Proxima shaping how Proxima grows not just in headcount, but in capability, cohesion, and culture. Her remit spans the full employee lifecycle, from talent acquisition and onboarding through compliance, employee relations, retention and talent management. Marija is a qualified executive coach and brings close to 20 years of international HR and talent acquisition experience spanning across multiple geographies, organisations and sectors from a multinational NASDAQ-listed company to the deeptech world where she’s helped scale from a couple of dozen to hundreds of people across multiple geographies and domains such as engineering, testing and manufacturing.

Head of Operations

Dr. Lennart Bock combines deep domain knowledge on plasma physics with broad business knowledge. Lennart holds a PhD from Technical University of Munich and went from organizing conferences and workshops about entrepreneurship to working on several early stage companies during his time as PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics. He now heads Business Operations at Proxima, and has been building the backbone of the company since pre-foundation.