15th ITER International School announced
Save the date! The 15th ITER International School (IIS) will be held from 20 to 24 July 2026 in Chengdu, China, co-hosted by the Engineering & Technical College of Chengdu University of Technology and the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP).
The ITER International School is designed to prepare young scientists and engineers for careers in nuclear fusion and in research areas connected to the ITER project. Its “school” format reflects the need to train future professionals across a broad range of interdisciplinary subjects, providing them with the comprehensive knowledge and skills required to contribute effectively to the success of ITER.
The subject of the 2026 school is "Physics and engineering of heating and current drive systems for magnetic fusion plasmas," with a scientific program coordinated by Drs. M. Huang and L. Zhang (SWIP) and Drs. M. Schneider and C. Darbos (ITER Organization). Heating and current drive systems are essential for achieving ITER’s fusion power demonstration goals—they not only heat the plasma up to the high temperatures required for thermonuclear deuterium-tritium fusion, but also drive electric currents in the plasma and control its behaviour. To achieve these objectives, a range of heating and current drive systems based on the injection of radiofrequency waves and fast neutrals into the plasma are applied in magnetic fusion devices. Heating and current drive systems involve a wide range of engineering designs, with technical issues to be resolved, and physics processes that need to be described in an integrated way together with the reaction of the plasma to such waves/fast neutrals.
The 2026 ITER International School will focus on the engineering of heating and current drive systems as well as the physics processes underlying their use for plasma heating, current drive, and the control of plasma scenarios in ITER and, more broadly, in magnetic fusion devices.
Further information on the 2026 school will be available in the next few weeks together with an announcement on the start of pre-registration. Find out more about past schools here.