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The first in-person FuseNet PhD event in three years took place from 4 to 6 July in Padova, Italy, hosted by the University of Padova and Consorzio RFX. A full roster of 131 participants from 23 countries and 44 different institutes and universities took part.

The FuseNet PhD Event is the place where European fusion PhD students meet and interact with affirmed international fusion researchers, aiming to strengthen and expand the fusion research network.

This session's participants were able to tour the Consorzio RFX facilities, including the ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility and the reversed field pinch device RFX-mod2.

See the full news story on the FuseNet website.

Produced by the Microwave & Imaging Sub-Systems group of the French multinational Thales, which provides electrical systems and services for the aerospace, defence, transportation and security markets, this video describes the company's work to design and build radio frequency and microwave sources for the ITER Project.

The mastery of vacuum, high voltage and microwave technologies is critical to creating wave-generating sources of ITER's radiowave external heating systems. The company is bringing all of its expertise to bear to build the European-sourced gyrotrons of the electron cyclotron heating system and the tetrodes of ion cyclotron heating system and contribute to "a disruptive alternative" in the 21st century energy mix.

See "Radiofrequency and Microwave Sources for Fusion Energy" on YouTube. 

The first week of June, the European Physical Society (EPS) organized the EPS Forum for the first time. The aim of the conference, which took place at the Sorbonne University in Paris, was to connect young physicists with big science and industry.

No fewer than three Nobel Prize Laureates were among the speakers—Barry Barish, Serge Haroche and John Michael Kosterlitz—to present the latest developments in the fields of quantum technology, energy science, accelerators, high-energy particle and nuclear physics. The European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, and the Vice-President of the European Research Council, Andrzej Jajszczyk, opened the EPS Forum on the first day.

As one of the first scientific speakers, Alberto Loarte, Head of the ITER Science Division, presented the physics basis of ITER and the status of the project. The interest showed by the young audience was enormous—as the steady traffic to the joint ITER/FuseNet booth proved.

One physics student from Macedonia, still undecided about his professional future, was so interested that he boarded the fast train from Paris down to Aix-en-Provence to see ITER with his own eyes.

For more impressions from the first EPS Forum click here.