In December of 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a fusion research center located within the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), achieved humanity’s first controlled fusion ignition, where the nuclear fuel produced more energy than was put into it to start the reaction. We sit down with Apurva Gowda, a Staff Scientist at LLNL, for a discussion on the lab’s breakthrough achievement, what made it possible, and where they go from here.