Recent events, research visits and conference participation

2018

On 19th January, Mervi Mantsinen attended the Corporate Liaison Programme Day (CLP) focused on Quantum Technologies organized by ICFO, Castelldefels, Spain.
On 14th February, our group appeared in the Spanish LAB24 TV program as an example of applying the new MareNostrum supercomputer to further the science. LAB24 is a TV program of Televisión Española (TVE) that disseminates the work of Spanish laboratories and research centers.
From 22nd to 23rd February, Allah Rakha presented his work titled “Modelling of Energetic Particle-Driven Alfvénic instabilities in TJ-II plasmas” at Fast Ions Physics workshop, held at IPP Greifswald, Germany.
From 26th February to 9th March, Dr John Wright, Principal Scientist at Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT (USA) visited our group, through a BSC Severo Ochoa incoming mobility funding, in order to install the All-Orders Spectral Algorithm (AORSA) code at MareNostrum to start a collaboration. Moreover John gave several talks where he introduced his research and the main features of AORSA.
From 12th to 17th March, Mervi Mantsinen participated in the on-site working sessions of the analysis and modelling tasks in preparation of the next JET experimental campaign, Culham Science Center, Abingdon, UK.
From 21st to 22nd March, Mervi Mantsinen participated in the Programme Committee Meeting for the 45^th European Physical Society Conference of Plasma Physics, Prague, Czech Republic.
From 3rd to 13th April, our fusion group participated to the WP-CD Code Camp at Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PSNC), Poznan, Poland. Xavier Sáez and Mervi Mantsinen worked in the PION integration into IMAS Kepler workflow. Albert Gutiérrez continued the development on his EUROfusion Engineering Grant and Edgar Olivares supported Albert work and learned how to use ASCOT code.
On 12th April, Xavier Sáez attended the bi-annual meeting of the EUROfusion High Level Support Team (HLST) in the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching, Germany. He presented the work developed in the group to improve the performance of FELTOR code.
On 13th April, Mervi Mantsinen, appeared in the last issue of “Fusion in Europe”. In the article titled as “Dan Brown, MareNostrum and Postdocs in Barcelona”, Mervi explains the relation among the fusion and supercomputing fields.
On 18th April, Mervi Mantsinen participated in Jornadas Tecniques “El projecte ITER i la seva situació actual”, Enginyers Industrials de Catalunya (EIC), Barcelona, Spain.
On 20th April, Mervi Mantsinen participated in the ICREA annual meeting.
From 23rd to 26th April, Mervi Mantsinen participated in the JET Refresher Course 2018, Culham Science Center, Abingdon, UK.
From 24th to 25th April, our group participated in the 5th Severo Ochoa Doctoral Symposium. Allah Rakha presented his work “Modelling of Alfvénic instabilities in complex toroidal magnetic geometries for fusion”. Edgar Olivares presented his talk “Robust point-location method for linear and high order meshes. Application to particle transport“. Dani Gallart presented his work “On the quest to reach nuclear fusion as a future energy source” . Marc Fuster presented his poster “Application of the edge-based finite element method for fusion plasma simulations” . Finally, Marc Fuster and Alba Gordó were volunteers and help its organization.
On 2nd May, Xavier Sáez contributed with a lecture “Simulation codes in Fusion Technology” to the Fusion Technology Course of the Nuclear Engineering Master organized by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.
On 4th May, Xavier Sáez gave a talk about the research performed in the fusion group and the Computer Applications in Science & Engineering department to a students group from Master in Astrophysics of the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
From 17th to 18th May, the group participated in the annual retreat of the Department of Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (CASE) in Altafulla, Spain. The program consisted of speeches, discussions and the study of ths Sprint method, which s a five-phase framework that helps answer critical business questions through rapid prototyping and user testing.
From 26th to 29th June, Xavier Sáez gave a plenary talk on “HPC for solving multi-physics problems” at the 6th International Workshop on Numerical Modelling of High-Temperature Superconductors (HTS) in Costa de Caparica, Portugal.
From 2nd to 6th July, Mervi Mantsinen and Allah Rakha participated in the 45^th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics in Prague, Czech Republic. Mervi presented a poster entitled “Modelling of ICRF heating in ASDEX Upgrade discharges with pure wave heating relevant to the ITER baseline scenario” while Allah Rakha‘s poster was entitled “Modelling of Alfvén cascades in NBI heated stellarator plasmas”.
On 10th July, Marc Fuster successfully presented his final bachelor thesis in Physics entitled: “Application of the Edge-Based Finite Element Method for fusion plasma simulation”. The oral exposition took place at the Faculty of Sciences of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
From 16th to 27th July, Edgar Olivares participated in the two-week Culham Plasma Physics Summer School organized at Culham Science Center, UK. He also visited the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor.
On 27th July, Xavier Sáez has been selected as a High Level Support Team (HLST) member by the General Assembly of EUROfusion.
On 5th September, The paper “Modelling of JET hybrid plasmas with emphasis on performance of combined ICRF and NBI heating” written by Dani Gallard as first author was published by Nuclear Fusion. Mervi Mantsinen and Xavier Sáez also collaborated in its development. The results will help improve the fusion plasma performance and, hopefully, boost the plasma performance in the forthcoming DTE2 campaign at JET.
On 14th September, Alba Gordó successfully presented her final master thesis in Modelling for Science and Engineering entitled “Computational study of defects in tungsten crystals by means of density functional theory”.

2018

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(2017-2016)