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Kudowa Summer School - Kudowa-Zdrój, Poland 
Report by Dovilė Gimžauskaitė, Valentina Marascu & Krasymyr Tretiak
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From the 13th to the 17th of June, Fusion students from all over Europe came together to attend the 13th Kudow Summer School in the beautiful and small town of Kudowa-Zdrój which is located right at the Polish-Czech border. The topic of the Summer School was “Towards Fusion Energy” and it was organized by the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion (IPPLM). The programme of the summer school consisted of a mix between high-quality lectures from invited speakers and short talks from participants about there own research.

 

The invited speakers discussed recent developments in the fields of basic plasma transport, edge plasma modelling, operation and edge control, plasma-facing components, plasma-wall interactions and related diagnostics. These lectures were given by professors from leading scientific institutes in Europe, such as the Max-Planck-Institut (Germany), the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion (Poland), the Science and Operations Department of the ITER-project (France) and many more.

Valentina Marascu, currently in the first year of her PhD at the University of Bucharest, Romania, was happy to attended the event, especially because the lectures proved to be useful for her PhD. "The lectures allowed me to understand what the major tasks are, when developping ITER and DEMO", Valentina said. "Furhtermore, the summer school has really helped me to comprehend my role in the bigger picture of the development of these reactors."

   

"I would like to emphasize the lecture of prof. G. Huijsmans about 'The physics of ELMs' and the lecture of prof. D. Tshakaya about 'Kinetic effects in the plasma edge'", says Krasymyr Tretiak, a Ukrainian PhD student at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. "The short student presentations were also very interesting and diverse, even though they were not directly connected to the school topics. The presentation about the results from Wendelstein 7-X is especially worth mentioning. Unfortunately, the 15 minutes of question- and discussion time was not always sufficient."

Dovilė Gimžauskaitė, a PhD student from Lithuania, especially liked the plenary afternoon sessions, "they were great for young scientists, not just to present research results, but also to get acquainted with each other and their work. In addition, the activities during our free time have also greatly contributed to get to know Fusion students from all over Europe and to establish connections for possible future collaborations. These free-time activities included a welcome reception and banquet and a visit to the Gold Mine and Park of Technology in Złoty Stok. Furthermore, we admired the beautiful Kudowa-Zdrój environment and we watched the European football championship."

 

Valentina, Dovilė and Tretiak all really enjoyed their stay in Kudowa. The summer school was well organised and the people were really nice. For Krasymyr, the summer school has been a great chance to prepare himself for his dissertation, Dovilė has deepened her understanding of Nuclear Fusion as an energy source and Valentina has gotten in touch with students from Germany, Poland, France, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and many more. All three students, would like to thank the organisation of the summer school and FuseNet for making their participation possible.


In an earlier article about the Kudowa Summer School, we have featured Ahmed Abdelhameed & Aleksandra Dembkowska. Click here to go to that article!