Jonathan GravesProf. Jonathan P. Graves is a Senior Scientist at EPFL and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, UK. He achieved first class joint honours in Electronic Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Nottingham, UK in 1996. He completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Mechanics from the University of Nottingham, UK, three years later in 1999. During his Ph.D. he was based in the Culham theory group of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, developing kinetic descriptions of the internal kink instability, and participating in deuterium-tritium experimental analysis in the Joint European Torus. After a short time in industry, and a postdoc at Nottingham University, he took a position at the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL, becoming a Senior Scientist in 2014, and became an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, UK, in 2020. In 2015 he became a member of the EUROfusion Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) and a member of the EUROfusion DEMO Technical Advisory Group. He is on the editorial board for the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, and in 2020 became Scientific Secretary of the Varenna-Lausanne International Workshop in Theory of Fusion Plasmas.
Paolo RicciPaolo Ricci earned his masters degree in nuclear engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, Turin (Italy) in 2000. His doctoral studies were conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with focus on kinetic simulation of magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail. He spent two-and-a-half years as a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College's Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he worked on gyrokinetic simulations of the Z pinch. He joined the EPFL's Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), as a EURATOM fellow in 2006, was named Tenure Track Assistant Professor in June 2010, and Associate Professor in August 2016. He is at the head of the SPC theory group. Paolo Ricci is the recipient of the 2016 Section de Physique Teaching Prize and of the 2021 Craie d'Or award from the EPFL physics bachelor students.
Laurent VillardOriginaire de Vauffelin (BE), Laurent Villard est né en 1961. Après avoir obtenu le diplôme d'ingénieur physicien de l'EPFL en 1983, il est assistant au CRPP où il entame une thèse. Ses études portent sur l'étude théorique du chauffage des plasmas par ondes radiofréquences, développant pour cela un code de calcul numérique sous contrat avec le Joint European Torus (JET, Angleterre). Il obtient en 1987 le doctorat ès sciences. En 1988, il est engagé en tant que chargé de cours à l'Université d'Addis Abeba, enseignant l'électromagnétisme et l'électrodynamique. En 1989 et 1990, il rejoint le Polytechnic Education Development Centre de l'Institute of Technology of Bandung (ITB, Indonésie). Ses activités contribuent à la formation et au soutien du personnel enseignant des dix-sept écoles polytechniques nouvellement créées en Indonésie. A la fin 1990, il revient au CRPP en tant que collaborateur scientifique. En 1993 il est nommé professeur assistant. En 1999, il est nommé maître d'enseignement et de recherche, puis, en 2005, professeur titulaire. En collaboration avec JET et General Atomics (USA) il étudie les instabilités qui peuvent être provoquées par les particules énergétiques issues du processus de fusion nucléaire. Avec des scientifiques du Keldysh Institute (Moscou), il s'intéresse au calcul de l'équilibre et de la stabilité de configurations du type tokamak. Enfin, en collaboration notamment avec le Max-Planck Institute fuer Plasma Physik, ses recherches portent sur la simulation numérique, par calcul à haute performance (HPC), de la turbulence dans les plasmas magnétisés.
Christian Gabriel TheilerChristian Theiler obtained his Master’s degree in physics from ETH Zurich in 2007 and his PhD from EPFL in 2011. He then joined MIT as a postdoctoral associate to work on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. In 2014, he returned to EPFL as a EUROfusion fellow, to join the TCV tokamak team. Two years later, he was named Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Plasma Physics at EPFL. Christian’s research focuses on tokamak boundary physics and related diagnostic techniques. He has contributed to the understanding of the formation, propagation, and control of turbulent plasma structures, called blobs, and gained new insights on the structure of transport barriers in the plasma periphery in different high-confinement regimes. His current research focuses on detachment physics and turbulence characteristics in conventional and alternative divertor magnetic geometries.