FuseNet’s annual PhD Event took place remotely in the gather.town this year, on 20 and 21 November 2021 with more than 90 participants.
On the first day, Dr Elena Righi-Steele, Head of Euratom research at the European Commission, and Mr Christopher Ibbott, Head of Industrial Policy and Technology Transfer Sector at the European Commission presented their work and gave interesting insights on the milestones of their careers.
The main event of the day was the Pecha Kucha competition of 20 PhD students, with a variety of topics and very good presentations. Between the Pecha Kucha sessions, there was an opportunity for informal socializing, called SpeePhDating.
In the afternoon, a technical keynote session was interspersed, where participants could choose between the Plasma Plenary Session (focusing on ELMs, plasma scenarios and NIF) and the Material Plenary Session (focusing on state-of-the-art in European fusion materials researches).
The evening ended with the virtual Pub Quiz, in a very good atmosphere.
The second day was opened by Dr Juan Knaster from Fusion from Energy (Barcelona, Spain), where he presented IFMIF research to the students.
The keynote presentation was followed by the poster session of PhD students, with almost 50 posters! We saw some very good posters on a wide variety of topics, from theoretical and simulation to engineering and experimental fields.
In the afternoon, the parallel session featured presentations on four topics by eminent experts in the field: deployment (effectively deploying fusion power plants: challenges and ways forward), fusion start-ups, liquid metals, fusion diagnostics (on ITER, DEMO and W7X).
Our fusion group was represented by Mr Mátyás Aradi at the 8-bit Event in the PechaKucha and poster sessions.