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Université libre de Bruxelles

published by bknaepen on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 14:05
Website: 
Website Université Libre de Bruxelles
E-mail: 
dcarati@ulb.ac.be
Contact person: 
prof. dr. Daniele Carati
Address: 
Université Libre de Bruxelles Association EURATOM-Etat Belge Physique Statistique et Plasmas, CP 231 Campus Plaine - Boulevard du Triomphe, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
General profile: 

With over 21,000 students, the ULB’s seven Faculties, Schools and specialised Institutes cover all disciplines and all study cycles, from bachelors to PhD and continuing education, and closely combine classroom teaching and research.

The 150 masters courses thaught at ULB are based on transdisciplinarity, internationalisation, collaboration and multilinguism. All masters courses include an end-of-course dissertation, work or personal project giving evidence of the student’s capacity for independent and critical thinking, his/her personal qualities and professional competences.

The doctorate includes doctoral studies aimed at achieving a high-level scientific and professional qualification. Doctoral studies are supervised by teams linked to doctoral schools run on an interuniversity, interdisciplinary and international basis and thereby offering high-level scientific supervision. Around 500 research units are active in various fields of pure science, humanities and medicine. Between 1500 and 1800 doctoral students are doing their PhD’s and on average 150 doctoral theses are defended each year.

ULB is responding to the new challenges of the European research and higher education area by combining tradition and innovation, the rigour and methodologies that have always been its research and teaching strengths, by opening itself to the emerging needs of society, of science and technology, by preserving its conception of education as public property and the university's social, civic and ethical dimension. In addition, ULB promotes the creation of joint Masters programmes and the development of thesis co-advisorships with other Belgian, European and international universities.

ULB's international cooperation is founded on 335 Socrates/Erasmus agreements, 328 bilateral institutional agreements, some 100 international research projects and a series of priority partnerships and networks. At ULB 26 % of its students, 9 % of its teaching staff, 36 % of its researchers, 41% of its PHD students and 10 % of its administrative staff are from abroad.

Research profile: 

Our group has a long research history on the application of numerical, modelling and theoretical approaches to the study of transport processes in fusion plasmas. Fusion is the main energy production mechanism in the universe. In particular, the basic energy source for the Sun is the nuclear fusion of hydrogen which produces helium and energy. On earth, fusion devices are using two hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) to form helium nuclei and produce energy. The challenge for fusion researchers is to compensate by heating a lower-density plasma to a higher temperature (about 100 million K) to initiate fusion reaction.

The fusion plasma can be described using either kinetic approaches such as the neo-classical transport theory of magnetised plasmas or fluid type equations such as magneto-hydrodynamics. Our group is actively working on these two levels of descriptions.

This research is developed in the framework of the EURATOM Framework Programme and our research unit is an active member of the EURATOM-Belgian state association. Our activities are conducted in close collaboration with other EURATOM association form The Netherlands, Germany, France, Romania, Greece, UK.

Institute photo: