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. Therefore, this winter school was a great opportunity to have a hands-on experience on a typical day at EPFL: how the courses are organized, how is a poster session, and how is the interaction with the teachers. Mainly, a winter school is devoted to learning about a precise topic, but I personally think that they are also a great opportunity to see how in other places they managed to share the knowledge with students and proceed in the research. This winter school was a PhD course on Tokamak control opened to visitors (not necessarily students) who work in control engineering or fusion. We were part of the second category since the three of us had little experience in control engineering, but a good background in Fusion as master students. Nevertheless, we were not new to Tokamak control: a concept heard multiple times, but never explored in detail. We knew the importance of this topic in fusion research and wanted to learn more about it. This was the second, not for importance, reseason for our application. Indeed, at this event, we understood better the main concepts of tokamak control and the critical role for realizing fusion: the role of the multiple coils system, the passive effect of the vacuum vessel, and the response of the plasma in different theoretical models. Furthermore, the professors presented how to control the tokamak in different operational regimes [the ramp-up, the ramp-down, and the flat top] which requires different control techniques. 

I want to thank all the professors and assistants who made this event possible, and I hope they will continue to leave this course open to master students. I believe it was very instructive for my background knowledge in fusion. I will recommend applying to it, in particular to those who are interested in fusion since I think it is adapted to people with different backgrounds. Finally, I would like to thank FuseNet for their support and for making the students travel and make them discover new amazing research realities