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I would describe my summer school experience at the Culham Science Centre as enlightening - from an academic point of view - as well as pleasurable and memorable. First of all, via this wonderful experience I was able to build strong connections with experts in the field of fusion and plasma physics, those being my instructors and fellow students conducting independent research. The lectures were concise, managing to successfully capture the essence of each subject without getting tedious.

From April – June 2022 I performed my Master’s internship project at the Plasma Modelling and Analysis Section at ITER. I was supervised by Guido Huijsmans and Sven Korving who helped me to implement hydrogenic molecules and the associated reaction in the nonlinear MHD code JOREK. Hydrogenic molecules are important where the temperature is low (divertor region) and are an energy and momentum sink of the plasma. These molecules can be puffed into the plasma or are formed by recombination at the wall.

It didn’t take long to realize that other two guys from Greece and I, were by far the youngest ones attending the 59th Culham Plasma Physics Summer School, which was the biggest one ever organized (100+ people). However, I had attended a basic Plasma Physics Course and so I was able to follow the most lectures during the first week. Some of them helped me revise and fill in the gaps of my knowledge at certain topics and of course in others there was presented completely new material to me that I barely knew the existence of it.

PlasmaSurf Summer Course 2022 “There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti

For my graduation project for my master’s in nuclear fusion, I went to the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) located in Lausanne at the EPFL campus. I worked with Alessandro Geraldini and Stephan Brunner (my supervisors) on developing a new code that simulates the boundary layers of magnetized plasmas. This project involved combining analytical work and programming, which I love. It was great and inspiring to work on something that pushes our understanding of plasma physics and nuclear fusion devices further. I learned a lot during my stay in Lausanne.

The internship took place at the EPFL campus. During this wonderful abroad experience I had the opportunity to learn a lot. Learning has touched many areas: from personal growth and independence to the improvement of the English language. Among the transversal skills acquired I also learned to deal with huge and complex codes and to tinker in the Linux environment. The thesis in its contents has been formative, since I came from an electrical engineering training.

My internship took place in Luxembourg at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology. My task was to improve the optical system to guide charged particles in the field of instrumentation.

Having a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, I only studied plasma physics and fusion science for my thesis project, but I did not go through a proper introduction to the subject, which is expected during my master’s degree courses. I chose to attend the Culham Summer School before taking those courses, and I’m very satisfied with the outcome. The lectures were all very interesting, but the ones that caught my attention the most were those about tokamak engineering, plasma modelling and instabilities.

For the internship required for my masters Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion and Sustainable Energy Technology (both at TU/e) I went to ITER. Supervised by Guido Huijsmans and Sven Korving I worked on writing a controller module for the nonlinear MHD code JOREK. It was great to write an own part of such an immensely complex and interesting code that is able to simulate so many interesting things. We discussed the project with several researchers at ITER who gave great input.