A Fusion Fest at KAUST

Overview

KAUST’s Extreme Computing Research Center and Program in Applied Physics are sponsoring an immersive Fusion Fest on the afternoon of June 5, 2023. The program, which is designed to attract KAUST talent to address key challenges in bringing about commercially profitable “green” fusion power, consists of two live lectures by Professor Amitava Bhattacharjee and a hybrid live-virtual panel discussion (with Q&A) on a pathway to the realization of a commercial stellarator, led by physicist Bhattacharjee, with participation from engineering experts from ITER and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and a veteran financial advisor to the energy industry.

Interest is anticipated from applied physicists, materials scientists, roboticists, computational scientists, machine learners, and mathematical modelers, all of whose expertise is needed to address numerous remaining challenges in the confinement, control, sensing, fueling, cladding, and power extraction from magnetically confined fusion devices.

The first lecture targets faculty, researchers, and students in the fields listed above, whereas the second lecture and the panel discussion target (in addition to the researchers) managers of research portfolios and potential investors in what is expected to become the dominant source of energy engineered for human use in the 21st century.