Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund report by Leonard Turica (2022, DPhil Theoretical Physics)

In July this year I participated in the 16^th Plasma Kinetics Theory Meeting, hosted at the Wolfgang Pauli Institute in Vienna. This is an academic workshop during which the participants give seminars and discuss ongoing or incipient research, and it has a legacy of producing collaborations and research projects with long-lasting impact on the field of plasma physics.

This year’s meeting aimed to explore the status quo of machine learning in plasma physics and fusion, and how it could be applied to our research questions effectively. Part of the talks discussed applications of machine learning for accelerating simulations or, excitingly, how knowledge of the underlying physics can be extracted from numerical results. The latter aligned well with the general theoretical interest that underlines my research on turbulence and transport in plasmas: I deal with chaotic systems that need to be characterised with limited available information.

My contribution to the meeting was very relevant to the topic. I gave an hour-long seminar talk outlining the work that constituted my recent publication on the physics in the edge of the JET-ILW tokamak fusion device. I discussed the methods I used to understand an experimental dataset and to build models to describe it. I also provided a real-life application of machine-learning extrapolation and discussed the pitfalls of working with a real, non-ideal system.

The other attendees gave excellent input on my research (with the questions session alone giving excellent future research ideas). The conversations throughout the workshop taught me a great deal about the research done by others, and I now have two completely new research projects with international collaborators. I also had the chance to make progress on the theoretical part of my research by meeting with one of my collaborators from the US.

The workshop was a great academic experience and it certainly will have an impact on my academic development. I am thankful to have been able to participate, share, and learn, and I owe this to the Trustees of the Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund for making this possible. Thank you!

Published: 9 October 2025

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