From 14th to the 20th of July I attended to the PlasmaSurf Summer School and, from the 22nd to the 31st, there was a 10-days internship-training program in Tokamak engineering and operation. All these activities were organized by the Instituto de Plasma e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN) of Lisbon. The PlasmaSurf Summer School it’s a great opportunity to introduce yourself in plasma physics and fusion research.
In the mornings, reference researchers gave us lectures of different topics and, in the afternoon, we did some leisure activities as climbing, mountain board, kayak and surf! The best part of these activities was to mix with the other participants and, therefore, to strengthen those new relationships to keep in contact in the future. Furthermore, we had the opportunity to learn a bit about Portugal and Lisbon culture with a guided tour of the city and a traditional dinner the last day of the event.
The internship-training program was an in-depth course about the main aspects of the operation of a Tokamak. Topics as the structural concepts of a Tokamak, or all the main diagnostics, are explained in detail. In addition, it is a Python-oriented course with lots of practical activities in data analysis in the IPFN tokamak, ISTTOK. Therefore, it is a great way to be introduced in Python programming! In conclusion, I think that the PlasmaSurf is one of the best ways to start in the plasma physics and fusion career with a lot of fun! Moreover, with the internship-training program, you have the opportunity start to work with real data in a real tokamak! Therefore, I strongly recommend this experience.
- Manuel Agredano Torres
Plasmasurf was a 5-days summer school on plasma physics, intense lasers and nuclear fusion aimed on BSc/MSc students of engineering and physics. After the summer school followed 10-days training on tokamak engineering and operation for the selected trainees. The Plasmasurf summer school took place in a hostel in Almada with a beautiful view of Lisbon. The lectures and experiments of the following training were carried in Alameda campus of Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon.
The main part of program of the summer school were lectures on topics ranging from the introduction to plasma physics to the ITER project challenges. Other lectures were focused for example on MHD description of plasma or laser plasma interactions. We have also conducted a remote-controlled experiment with a Langmuir probe in plasma. On this practical example we had a chance to process real world data using python. I think the summer school had a good balance of theoretical plasma physics lectures and more technical topics. After each day’s lectures we tried different outdoor activities like surfing or climbing. It was amazing to try new sports and take a break from the lectures.
The tokamak engineering and operation training was focused more on the experimental activities on the ISTTOK tokamak. We learned about different diagnostics, that are used to study plasma in the tokamak, and we have also participated on experiments with scientists operating the diagnostics and processed the measurements from electric and magnetic probes, interferometry, etc. At the end of the training we were offered a chance to work with IST further on a scientific paper.
- Jakub Čaloud
The Plasmasurf Summer School it was an amazing experience. I met more people from different country that permise me to exchange my cultural and scientistic point of view. The city of Lisboa is very big and fantastic full of activity and attractions. The courses are been very interesting, we did lessons on Plasma Physics, Plasma technologies, Lasers and laser-plasma interaction and Data Analysis.All the professors came from the IPFN Istitute. I followed the lessons every days from 9:30 until the 15:30. After the lessons all days we had an organised activity from the school like: surf, rock climbing, kayak and one it was a surprise.
This experience teached me a lot. I had the opportunity to know the Portugal culture, improved my skills in the English language and I obtained a new knowledge in the plasma physics. The best thing of this experience is that allowed me to make new international friendships and compare my thinking and my knowledge in this field with different cultures. I recommend this summer school to all student because is very formative on a personal and study level. According to my thought, nowadays these kind of experience are very importart for a student and future researcher, especially because you can compare yourself with different ways of thinking and different mode to solve problems.
- Yacopo Damizia