Opening Session
Roddy Vann - FuseNet 
Chair of FuseNet
Professor at York Plasma Institute
School of Physics - Engineering and Technology
University of York
Key-Note Speakers
Ambrogio Fasoli - EPFL
« A travel through the European approach to fusion, with a brief stop at burning plasma physics »
Abstract
The European Fusion Roadmap for reaching fusion energy on earth and its articulation into eight missions will be described.
Examples of recent achievements in Horizon 2020 will be presented.
The approach taken for Horizon Europe and the relevant plans and expected sequence of events will be introduced,
As an interlude, some aspects of burning plasma physics will be discussed.
Alberto Loarte - ITER
Objectives and status of the ITER project, the first fusion reactor under construction
Science, Controls and Operations Department, Science Division, ITER Organization
I am the head of the Science Division at the ITER Organization and have co-authored a large number of papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. My works have been referenced more than 15000 times and my H-index is 56 (based on Web of Science). I am member of the European, Spanish and American Physical Societies and Fellow of the UK Institute of Physics. I have been co-Chair of the Edge Plasma and Divertor Physics, Edge Plasma and Pedestal Physics, Transport and Confinement topical groups of the International Tokamak Physics Activities and secretary to the ITER Council Science and Technology Committee and have played a leading role in the development of the physics basis behind the design of the ITER tokamak and of the plans for its scientific exploitation (the ITER Research Plan).
I carried out my PhD research at the Joint European Torus where I also completed my postdoctoral research. After that, I joined the EFDA-Close Support Unit at the Max Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik in Garching, where I was responsible for the EFDA Technology Programme in the area of plasma-wall interactions for ITER. In 2008, I joined the ITER Organization Science Division. My research has focused on the characterization and control of stationary and transient wall power fluxes in tokamaks and on issues related to the integration of high confinement core plasmas with edge plasma requirements for power and particle exhaust. In my talk I will describe : a) how ITER’s fusion production goals will be demonstrated through a range of plasma scenarios addressing specific physics issues of fusion plasmas, b) the basis and the design of the ITER tokamak and the status of its construction and c) the plan for ITER’s scientific exploitation to the demonstrate the project’s goals.
Dr. Valerio Tomarchio - Technical officer - Fusion for Energy - Germany
Valerio Tomarchio is a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and has been working in the field of nuclear fusion technology for almost 18 years. He is currently Technical Responsible Officer at Fusion for Energy (F4E), managing large contracts for the procurement of actively cooled components for JT-60SA, the largest superconducting tokamak ever built before ITER, currently in the commissioning phase. He also teaches a course on fusion technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).
Parallel Talks
Thomas Klinger
Thomas Klinger, born in 1965 in Eutin/Germany, studied physics at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel. After a research period in France he obtained his PhD in 1994 with a thesis on non-linear plasma dynamics. As a research assistant at the University of Kiel, Klinger was concerned with drift wave turbulence and nonlinear plasma structures. As visiting scientist he conducted research at the Alfvén Laboratory in Stockholm, the Centre de Physique Théorique and the Université Aix-Provence in Marseille and Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching. He obtained his habilitation in 1998 with a thesis on the control of plasma instabilities. Shortly thereafter he was appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Greifswald, where he has headed the Institute of Physics as chair from 2000 till 2001. He is head of the "Stellarator Dynamics and Transport" Division and since 2005 scientific director of the project Wendelstein 7-X.
Carlos Hidalgo - CIEMAT
I received my PhD degree at the Madrid Complutense University with my work on structural defects in solids and positron annihilation spectroscopy. My next are
a of research was related to plasma turbulence, transport and plasma diagnostics at CIEMAT where I am currently leading the Spanish Fusion National Laboratory.
I have worked in different international laboratories, initially as a PhD and post student [Technical University of Denmark, Nuclear Research Centre of Grenoble, Technical University of Helsinki] and later as visiting scientist [Fusion Centre at the University of Austin (US), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US), Joint European Torus (UK), Max Planck Institute (Germany), National Institute Fusion Studies (Japan), Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP, China)].
I am author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications on solid-state physics and plasma physics.
Gianluigi Serriani - Consorzio RFX
Responsible for Scientific Exploitation at ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility, Padova (Italy)
After several years experience in the diagnostics of the edge region of fusion plasmas, Dr. Gianluigi Serianni entered the field of high power neutral beams for plasma heating, addressing the physical, operational and diagnostic aspects, particularly in view of ITER injectors. He currently leads the scientific activities for the SPIDER facility.
Francesco Volpe - Renaissance Fusion
Francesco is a fusion plasma physicist turned entrepreneur. He studied and co
nducted his research in Italy (Laurea 1998), Germany (PhD 2003), the UK and USA (post-docs ended in 2008). From 2009 to 2019 he held academic appointments at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and at Columbia University, in New York. Francesco carried out research on all four major magnetic confinement fusion concepts (tokamaks, spherical tokamaks, stellarators and reversed field pinches), making contributions to the physics of Electron Bernstein Waves, avoidance of tokamak disruptions by locked mode stabilization, simplification of stellarators and control of liquid metal walls. He received the 2003 Otto Hahn Medal (thesis prize of the Max Planck Society), the 2011 DOE Early Career Award and the 2015 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award by Fusion Power Associates. In 2019 he earned an Executive MBA at ESCP Europe and in 2020 he founded the first magnetic fusion start-up in continental Europe and one of only three stellarator start-ups in the world: Renaissance Fusion.
Frédérick Bordry - Gauss Fusion
After ten years of academic career, Dr Frédérick Bordry joined CERN in 1986, where he has held several scientific and management positions. From 2014 to 2020, he was Director for Accelerators and Technology at CERN, responsible for the operation and exploitation of the whole CERN accelerator complex, with particular emphasis on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Since January 2021, he has been an honorary member of CERN, and scientific advisor to several institutions, industries, and start-ups. He is the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of Gauss Fusion.
Jorrit Lion - Proxima Fusion
"I have studied fundamental physics at the University of Heidelberg Germany and plasma physics for fusion the University of York in the UK. I started my PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasmaphysics in Greifswald with a focus on systems studies of the reactor path of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, which is built and operated at the same institute.
In my work I developed a general version of the systems code PROCESS for stellarator, a 0D systems code that was until then mainly used for eurofusion tokamak DEMO studies.
During my PhD, I was part of the EUROfusion stellarator power plant studies consortium and was an affiliated member of the international SIMONS collaboration "hidden symmetries" for stellarator optimization. I have authored and co-authored several papers related to systems code studies of stellarators and to new cost functions for stellarator optimization with technological constraints.
After my PhD, in early 2023, I co-founded Proxima Fusion, the first ever spin-out company from the Max-Planck-Insitute for Plasmaphysics. Based in Munich, Germany, Proxima Fusion sets out to optimize, design and then build a QI stellarator as a fusion power plant, together with the its parent institute and based on lessons learned from the Wendelstein 7-X project.
In April 2023, Proxima Fusion managed to close a seed funding round of 7.5 Million Euros. Since then, the team has grown from 8 to 17 people and is continuously looking to further expand the team with qualified and passionate people looking to realize fusion on earth."
