Dr. Nebel is a recognized expert on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). He spent the first 30 years of his career at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) as a Director's post-doc, then as a staff member, section leader, and group leader. He worked in the Controlled Thermonuclear Research (CTR), Theory (T), and Applied Theoretical Physics (X) Divisions. He specialized in nonlinear simulations, plasma theory, and electrostatic confinement fusion devices.

Dr. Nebel received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign. His thesis advisor was Professor George Miley. Rick has over 100 publications.

In 2007 Dr. Nebel joined Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2) as president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of directors. He left EMC2 in 2010 and founded Tibbar Plasma Technologies (Tibbar), Inc. where he is currently the President. While at Tibbar he discovered previously unknown solutions of the MHD equations which led Tibbar to invent a simple plasma device with helical electrodes that could be used as an electrical transformer. Tibbar is presently working on an electrostatic confinement fusion device.