On Monday, the SUMTRAIC 2011 summer school opened. One of the students attending, Tom van Laer from Belgium, will report his experiences during the summer school here:

Monday, August 22:

After the welcoming speech SUMTRAIC 2011 started with a short introduction of the participants and mentors. It is a very interesting group with people from all kinds of different countries like Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and of course the Czech Republic itself.

The goal of the first day is to get acquainted with the COMPASS tokamak, so not surprisingly the day started with a lecture about the tokamak. Afterwards the whole group visited the COMPASS tokamak and Dr. Stöckel gave us a tour and told us a lot of interesting facts about the tokamak and its accessories.

After the lunch we attended lectures about the workings of the tokamak, its diagnostics and operating system. We learned how to process data with MATLAB. Later, we were divided into 5 different research groups assigned to the various diagnostics available on COMPASS.

This evening the people who still have enough energy left will go to a pub to have a drink and get to know each other better.