From January to June 2024, I had the great opportunity to conduct my master thesis project at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany. During my stay I worked on new ways of calibrating of the electron density measurements using the Thomson scattering diagnostic. Since the Thomson scattering system is very sensitive to displacements in the diagnostic setup and the initial calibration takes a lot of time new ways of improving the measured density profiles have been implemented.

One approach that was recently also developed at W7-X was using neural networks. Even though I had no previous experience with neural networks or artificial intelligence it was a great opportunity for me to learn about a new topic. Especially with the help of many different people from IPP that have always taken their time to explain me my problems if I got stuck at some point.

Another great opportunity of being at IPP was gaining a deeper insight on many different topics within fusion through the various talks through my stay. One of the highlights of my time at IPP was the opportunity to attend the E2/E2M (Plasma Edge Physics Group) Program Seminar at Kloster Seeon. There I could present my work with a poster to a broad audience and got many more interesting ideas that I could implement in my work.

Luckily, I had the possibility to live in an apartment in Garching that was very close to the institute. While Garching itself is a very quiet city, the connection to the center of Munich is very fast and the rent is way lower than in Munich itself.

All in all, I had a great time at the IPP as I had the opportunity to learn a lot of new physics and also meet many new people who all had unique tips and stories to learn from. I am very happy and grateful that FuseNet supported my stay at the IPP.