In 2016, he was awarded the BBVA Prize to the Best Theoretical Physicist by the Spanish Royal Physics Society. He joined the Princeton faculty and PPPL in September 2021.
Professor Parra Diaz is interested in hot magnetized plasmas, and in particular, in plasmas for nuclear fusion energy, but has also worked on cold, partially ionized plasmas and accelerators. Most of his work has focused on how hot magnetized plasmas scape magnetic field confinement due to collisions or self-generated electromagnetic fluctuations commonly known as turbulence.