Disruptions Team joins the 2025 Eni Annual Meeting

On June 18th 2025, colleagues from different teams at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center traveled to Italy to attend Eni’s Annual Meeting “Where Ideas Meet Impact,” in San Donato Milanese. During the three-day event, the PSFC contingent met with partners at Eni to learn about the many research projects taking place at their Research and Technology Innovation Center, and to renew and expand areas of collaboration on fusion science and technology. In particular, Disruptions team group leader Cristina Rea and postdoctoral associate Enrique Zapata Cornejo met with their collaborators to present the latest advancements in Eni-sponsored research on radiative instabilities and confinement regime identification.

This 2025 edition was dense with activities: visits to the Bolgiano R&D laboratories on the first day; talks and debate panels about Eni’s R&D projects on carbon capture and renewables on the second day; and on the last day, dedicated discussions to fusion science and technology, and research sponsored by Eni through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITei) program.

The opening lecture, “From Quantum Foundations to Industrial Innovations,” was given by MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi, 2023 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The prestige, interdisciplinary nature and variety of research supported by Eni proved to be remarkable: from chemical engineering to solar energy and machine learning applications, to mention a few.

On the day devoted to Fusion, the keynote speech was delivered by Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, showing the fast-paced progress of the SPARC project and ARC plant design. Following that, Professor and PSFC director Nuno Loureiro, together with principal research scientists Cristina Rea, Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez, and Kevin Woller shared attention in the different panel discussions. In particular, group leader Cristina Rea joined a panel focused on the use of AI in fusion, highlighting the importance of explainable and interpretable solutions reconnecting to a clear understanding of the underlying physics. Robust and verifiable AI solutions can only be enabled by leveraging open source technologies and public data.

The event corroborated how crucial public-private partnerships are in the current fusion funding landscape, enabling the realization of transformative technologies needed for demonstration first and commercialization next. We look forward to continuing this partnership and returning next year showing further research advancements.