All SPC news

New high-performance computing hub aims to harness the sun's energy

Published:23.03.21 — EPFL will soon be home to a European hub for high-performance computing focused on fusion power – a potential source of clean, risk-free energy. As part of this effort, EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center will lead a campus-wide, cross-disciplinary research team.

Joaquim Loizu granted the IUPAP 2020 Prize in plasma physics

Published:23.02.21 — Joaquim Loizu, a researcher at EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center, is the recipient of IUPAP’s (International Union of pure and applied physics) 2020 Young Scientist Prize in plasma physics. This prize is awarded annually to a young international scientist for outstanding research.

Heat loss control method in fusion reactors in Nature Communications

Published:17.02.21 — The core of a fusion reactor is incredibly hot. Hydrogen that inevitably escapes from it must be cooled on its way to the wall, as otherwise, the reactor wall would be damaged. Researchers from the Dutch institute DIFFER and EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center have developed a strict measurement and control method for the cooling of very hot particles escaping from fusion plasmas. This milestone for fusion research is published in Nature Communications. 

2020 Nuclear Fusion journal award to Prof. Christian Theiler

Published:23.12.20 — Prof. Christian Theiler received the IAEA's Nuclear Fusion Journal Award 2020 for his paper presenting ‘Results from recent detachment experiments in alternative divertor configurations on TCV’.

Welcome MAST Upgrade, a new fusion device !

Published:18.11.20 — On October 29th, 2020, MAST Upgrade, UK’s new fusion experimental device, came to life. Inside the machine’s vessel, hydrogen was heated into a plasma hotter than the temperature in the center of the Sun. The Swiss Plasma Center congratulates the MAST Upgrade team and looks forward to future scientific collaborations.

Swiss Plasma Center trains researchers to harness the sun's energy

Published:18.09.20 — Holder of a recent PHD from the EPFL Swiss Plasma Center, Riccardo Agnello is now working for the nuclear fusion reactor ITER. The Swiss Plasma Center is making a major contribution to this enormous international project, which holds out great hope for clean, abundant energy without long-term radioactive waste.

World's largest nuclear fusion reactor ITER begins assembly phase

Published:18.08.20 — The world's largest nuclear fusion reactor ITER is now being assembled in the South of France. This major international scientific project is followed up at the EPFL Swiss Plasma Center, one of the world’s top research labs on nuclear fusion.

Rogério Jorge gets the Physics Doctoral Thesis Award

Published:18.12.19 — Rogério Jorge got the award for his thesis entitled ‘A moment-based model for plasma dynamics at arbitrary collisionality’ supervised by Prof. Paolo Ricci at the Swiss Plasma Center and Prof. Nuno Loureiro at the MIT and at the University of Lisbon.

Best Poster Award for P. Blanchard

Published:19.11.19 — Dr. Patrick Blanchard received the Best Poster Prize at the Laser Aided Plasma Diagnostics Conference. He presented there the latest improvements in the system installed on the TCV tokamak for the electron temperature and density measurement via Thomson scattering. He also presented the first results obtained with this diagnostic.

Awards and honors for three PhD students

Published:10.10.19 — Three PhD students from the SPC were honoured at the annual conference of the Plasma Division of the European Physical Society. M. Wensing received one of the best PhD student poster awards, A. Iantchenko was recommended for the Itoh Project Prize and H. De Oliveira scored highly in the rankings for the best images and videos.