Disruption Research at the 13th ITER International School

Picture credits: ITER Organization

Graduate students in MIT PSFC Disruption Studies Group made a splash at the 13th ITER International School, presenting new research updates and snagging an “Outstanding Poster” award.

The ITER International School (IIS), formerly the ITER Summer School, is an annual workshop created to train the world’s future leaders of magnetic fusion. Students from around the world are brought together for lectures delivered by top researchers and to give poster presentations describing their own work.

This edition of the program was hosted in Nagoya, Japan, and ran from December 9th-13th, 2024. The theme of the meeting, “magnetic fusion diagnostics and data science,” involved topics where the Disruptions group produces world-leading research.

Two PhD students in the Disruptions group, Zander Keith and Andrew Maris, were awarded scholarships to attend the meeting by the US Burning Plasma Organization. Zander presented his work developing a multi-device dataset for studying neoclassical tearing modes and using data-driven methods to predict tearing mode dynamics in future tokamaks. Andrew discussed his analysis of the density limit recently published in Nuclear Fusion and results from his successful density limit avoidance experiments at DIII-D (manuscript in preparation). Andrew’s work was recognized with a “Outstanding Poster” award during the closing ceremony.

Picture credits: ITER Organization