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Drawing inspiration from the robotic tasks that will be faced at ITER during installation and maintenance activities, the annual ITER Robots contest challenges students of different ages to imagine, design, and program Lego robots. Launched in 2012 by Agence Iter France and the ITER Organization, the program is growing every year.

As Newsline reported last June, the 2017 ITER Robots competition involved 600 students from 27 schools organized into 46 teams. This year, the competition will expand to about 70 teams and also offer a new program—ITER Robots Junior—for primary age students in 4th, 5th and 6th grade (12 additional teams). And who better to help design the new junior competition than 14-year-old Camylle Jordan, who spent one week as an intern in ITER's Remote Handling Section.

According to Jean-Pierre Martins, the ITER remote handling engineer who supervised Camylle, "she solved every issue she encountered in a pragmatic manner." In addition to becoming familiar with the complexity of the ITER Project, Camylle had to adapt her programming skills to work with a Thymio robot and to learn the basics of SolidWorks ®, a Computer Assisted Design tool.

The young intern left the ITER engineers impressed with her efficiency and confidence. She successfully tested the proposed curriculum and competition design, proactively suggesting and demonstrating ways to improve the robot mission. She participated in the official kick-off meeting of the ITER Robots Junior challenge, interacting with people from ITER, Agence Iter France and the French education system (Education Nationale). And she found time to fit in a tour of the ITER worksite and virtual reality room, and to give an on-camera Facebook interview to student journalists.

Most importantly, she documented her progress systematically, keeping a logbook of written records, photos, and videos, to ensure the contribution of her workweek at ITER would not be lost.

Bernard Bigot, Director-General of the world's biggest nuclear fusion project, tells Brussels-based Science|Business the perpetually out-of-reach energy source is finally in sight—so long as Trump does not scale back US involvement.

Read the article published on 15 March here.