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Eye witness report from the fusenet Phd event at IPP Garching, part 1

Eye witness report from the fusenet Phd event at IPP Garching, part 1

Currently, FUSENET is funding an event in IPP Garching that allows Ph.D students to network and learn from each others' work. One of the Ph.D students present, Stuart Henderson, reports:

You would probably think that throughout your 3 years studying for a Ph.D that you would eventually get to know everyone working in your field regardless of events such as this - especially in a field as niche as Fusion. On the contrary.

I will give my account of how the events on the first day panned out. Firstly, I flew out from Gatwick with my fellow Ph.D students working on the MAST spherical Tokamak. We were all preparing for our easyjet flight - student mentality, flights paid for by FUSENET but still booked cheap easyjet flights - and we began talking about the upcoming poster session (as part of the networking event, a poster session was planned).

Now, as a bit of background, the Ph.D students travelling with me are basically based a few desks apart from each other. So anyway, Laaky as we shall refer to one of them, mentioned that he had had a look at my poster ( he had been designated poster carrier, or Dad, for the trip) and said 'Oh, we actually do similar work'. Bare in mind we have known each other for a year ...

Well, you know, keep work separate from friends and all that ... Maybe this whole networking event was a good idea after all.



After arriving at our 4* star hotel (which in my humble student opinion was easily 104* - anywhere that plays fish with meditation music on arrival is a worth an extra 100 * surely?), we prepared ourselves for the early start the next day in the usual British way.

The first lecture, by Francesco Romanelli, was a brilliant introduction to all that FUSENET stands for and why we were here. During the process, we also were subjected to some anecdotes to help us along. Then, moving along with German efficiency to the coffee break, we headed for the tour of ASDEX Upgrade.



We had the pleasure of seeing a Neutral Beam Box without its cover ... a sentence I didn't think I've ever type, but none the less still impressive. I've included some pictures for you to have a little nosey behind the scenes at ASDEX Upgrade.



After lunch, which sadly ended up in a little bit of a canteen argument trying to persuade them that our lunch voucher was in fact real, we headed for the poster session.



I finally realised that my fellow Ph.D student actually did pretty much the same thing as me, and I made a few new contacts in the fusion community - here's to the ITER - Generation ....