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At the beginning of February 2025, my colleagues Haluk, Gabriele, and I had the luck to attend a PhD course at EPFL Switzerland. This course is open to visitors and students from other universities as a winter school. We run into this opportunity at the end of November 2024 through a LinkedIn post on EPFL. For us, going to EPFL just for two weeks was already a dream: since I'm seeking to do a PhD, the amazing campus and the fame of the research environment of this world-leading university make us wonder how researchers live there.

"The future of energy lies in mastering the power of fusion—controlling the stars here on Earth."  This quote perfectly encapsulates the amazing experience I had during my training in tokamak fusion reactor control! 

Hi, I’m Lorenzo Didò, a master's student in Robotics System and Control at ETH Zurich.  Between the 3rd and 14th of February, I had the opportunity to attend the “Control and Operation of Tokamaks” course offered at EPFL by the SPS lab.  

Experience at EPFL’s "Control & Operations of Tokamaks" Course Participating in the "Control & Operations of Tokamaks" course at EPFL was an enriching experience, both academically and personally. The course provided a deep dive into the world of tokamak control, covering both theoretical foundations of control and real applications, crucial for magnetic confinement fusion research. 

I participated in the STEAM project, studying Innovative shields against extreme heat fluxesunder the supervision of Dr. Jan Horáček at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. As part of this project, I was involved in experiments, simulations and data analysis. I developed skills in COMSOL Multiphysics and experimental data processing. It was a valuable learning experience for me. It also gave me a chance to explore the beautiful city of Prague. Thanks to FuseNet for the opportunity.

Hi there! I'm Haluk, and I'm currently studying nuclear fusion through the FUSION-EP program. I'm at the University of Lorraine, working on my master's thesis. 

As the final step of my second year of a master’s program in magnetic fusion, I had the great opportunity to conduct my six-month master’s thesis at the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) in Switzerland. Welcomed within one of the laboratories at EPFL, I worked on the TCV (Tokamak à Configuration Variable), a unique tokamak capable of shaping the plasma into various configurations within its vacuum vessel. 

Hi! My name is Max Winkel and I am pursuing a double master’s program, combining the MSc Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion and MSc Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. As a part of the program, we have the opportunity to do a ~3 month internship in an international environment. Using the network of our professors, this environment turned out to be the MHD and fast particles research group at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany. 

My name is David Becker, and I am a Master student at TU Eindhoven. Partly thanks to FuseNet, I was able to do a 5-month internship at ITER in St. Paul-lez-Durance, France. ITER is an international collaborative project aimed at demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of nuclear fusion as a new green energy source for the future. I am glad to have had the opportunity to be a part of this amazing project, to work in such an interesting international environment and to live in the south of France for five months. I also