Faculty

The curricular part of APPLAuSE is taught by a number of senior scientists specialized in plasmas, nuclear fusion and lasers.

Eduardo Alves

Principal Investigator of IST with Habilitation, and Deputy Director of the Laboratory of Accelerators and Radiation Technologies of CTN/IST. He coordinates IPFN’s Group of Advanced Materials, which is responsible for the activities on Materials and Plasma Wall interactions of the Fusion Consortium. He supervises several PhD and post-doctoral projects, and is the IST coordinator of European Projects on large facilities (SPIRIT) and Advanced Training (SPRITE, Marie Curie). His activities have produced more than 550 publications in ISI journals with an h-factor of 35. He is the recipient of FCT’s “Stimulus to Excellence” Award (2004) and the Silver Medal of Scientific Merit, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon (2005).

Luís L. Alves

Professor of the Physics Department of IST and Head of the Gas Discharges and Gaseous Electronics group of IPFN. He obtained his degrees in Physics / Engineering Physics (Lic. 1987; PhD 1993; Agregação 2006) from IST. He was Invited Researcher of several laboratories in France and Spain, namely the Laboratoire de Physique des Gaz et des Plasmas (Univ. Paris XI) where he held a Post-Doctoral fellowship in 1995-1996. He is an expert in the modelling and simulation of low-temperature plasmas. His research focuses on the study of microwave and radio-frequency discharges, of interest for material science, biological and environmental applications. He is a regular teacher of the “International School in Low Temperature Plasma Physics: Basics and Applications” (Bad Honnef, Germany), which he chaired in 2014 and will chair again in 2016. He is the Programme Director of APPLAuSE and the coordinator of PhD curricular unit Advanced Topics in Plasma Physics, Nuclear Fusion and Lasers.
Personal website

Bernardo Carvalho

Assistant Professor at the IST Physics Department and researcher at IPFN, where he coordinates the control and data acquisition (CODAC) systems on the ISTTOK tokamak. He received his MSc (1993) and PhD (2003) degrees in Engineering Physics from IST. His research interests beyond control and data acquisition for fusion devices include electronic instrumentation, FPGA data processing, magnetic probes and MHD Diagnostics. Recently he was designated as chief-engineer for the European Shock-Tube for High Enthalpy Research Lab (ESTHER) and coordinator and main developer for CODAC system.

Rui Coelho

Assistant Researcher at IPFN. Graduation in Physics Engineering by IST (1995) and PhD in Physics by the Tech. Univ. of Lisbon (2001) in collaboration with the Istituto di Fisica del Plasma, Milan. Post-doc at Politecnico of Turin (2002). Main research interests cover magnetic reconnection in tokamak plasmas, integrated modelling frameworks and workflows in fusion research and real-time signal processing applied to fusion diagnostics. Deputy task force leader of the EFDA Integrated Tokamak Modelling Task Force (2008-2013). Coordinator of the Equilibrium and Linear MHD Stability Chain activity on the Work Package – Code Development of the EUROFUSION Consortium. Scientific coordinator of experiments in JET and AUG tokamak experiments. Co-authored 51 publications in international journals.

João M. Dias

Assistant Professor at the IST Physics Dept. and researcher at IPFN. He obtained his degrees (Lic. 1992, MSc 1996 and PhD 2001) from IST. His interests are focused on secondary radiation sources and optical diagnostics in laser-plasma interaction field. He has also devoted significant work to optical applications in medicine (eye optical modeling) and in industry (spectroscopy and laser metrology). At the Physics Dept. he is currently the vice-director of the Engineering Physics Integrated Master Course. In 2012 he was awarded along with his PhD student the Seed of Science Award for exact sciences from the scientific outreach portuguese journal “Jornal Ciência Hoje”.

Marta Fajardo

Principal Researcher at IPFN and Invited Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of IST. She is a PhD in Physics from the Technical University of Lisbon and Ecole Polytechnique (2001), specialized in short-wavelength coherent radiation and applications. Her research interests include characterization of warm dense matter with x-ray lasers, high harmonic generation, and designing new XUV diagnostics. She is responsible for the Coherent X-ray Sources team at IPFN’s Group for Lasers and Plasmas.

Horácio Fernandes

Assistant Professor with habilitation at the IST Physics Department and researcher at IPFN, where he coordinates the activity on the tokamak ISTTOK. In 1999 he created the e-lab, the first remote laboratory at IST and one of the few in the world for education purposes, with free access and hosting about 20 online experiments. His scientific interests cover fusion devices real-time operation and engineering. He also maintains regular participation in science outreach. He is currently a member of the “Technical Advisor Panel” at F4E (the European Agency for ITER) and a research coordinator in IAEA.

Gonçalo Figueira

Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of IST and researcher at IPFN. He is a PhD in Physics from the Technical University of Lisbon (2001), specialized in high intensity lasers and ultrashort laser pulses. His research interests include ultrabroadband optical parametric chirped pulse amplification, diode-pumped amplifiers and ultrashort laser diagnostics. He is in charge of laser R&D at IPFN’s Laboratory for Intense Lasers, and coordinates public information activities at IPFN.
Personal website

Bruno Gonçalves

Assistant Researcher at IPFN and Invited Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of IST. He is a PhD in Physics from the Technical University of Lisbon (2003) specialized in nuclear fusion, edge plasma physics and diagnostics. He also has the Habilitation in Physical Engineering (2012), His research interests include nuclear fusion diagnostics and control and data acquisition and edge physics and plasma turbulence. He is the President of IPFN since 2012.

Thomas Grismayer

Assistant Researcher in the Group for Lasers and Plasmas. Thomas Grismayer completed a PhD degree in Plasma Physics at the Centre de Physique Théorique of Ecole Polytechnique in 2007 (France). His research interest include ion acceleration in dense target irradiated, parametric instabilities related to inertial fusion, shear instabilities in plasma and more recently Quantum Electrodynamics effects in plasma in extreme high fields.

Vasco Guerra

Assistant Professor with the Physics Department at IST and researcher at IPFN. He received the MSc (1994), PhD (1998) and Habilitation (2010) in Physics from IST. His research interests are focused om the modeling of kinetic processes in molecular plasmas, including electron, heavy-particle and surface kinetics. He has also some very fundamental work on the foundations of Special Relativity and of Thermodynamics. He coordinates the unit Fundamentals of Plasma Science and Engineering.
Personal webpage

Maria E. Manso

Associate Professor with Habilitation at IST’s Electrical and Computing Engineering (ECE) Department, and Principal Researcher at IPFN (1986 – 2012). Although retired since December 2012 she gives regular contributions to both IST (Physics/ECE Departments) and IPFN. Her research interests include microwave diagnostics with focus in reflectometry techniques and wave propagation in complex media aiming at the study of fusion plasma physics. Currently she gives lectures in post-graduate programs, supervises 3 PhD theses, collaborates with IST in its master programs, and besides IPFN is also a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Germany.

Kevin Michael Schoeffler

Kevin Schoeffler is a postdoctoral researcher working under Luis Silva in the Group for Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) at the Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN) at Instituto Superior Técnico. He is generaly interested in fluid dynamics in nature, and in particular plasma physics. He has a particular interest in magnetic reconnection, and its applications in understanding many systems in space physics. I work on computer modeling of plasmas where he has used parallel processing on supercomputers including Helios, Shaheen, Supermuc, Juqueen, Mira, and MareNostrum, He completed his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Maryland, where he worked with James Drake.

Carlos Silva

Graduated in Physics Engineering by IST (1992), where he also received the following academic degrees in Physics: Master (1995), PhD (2000) and Habilitation (2013). His research is focused on edge physics, multi-scale turbulent transport and diagnostic development in fusion devices. The work is performed in devices such as ISTTOK (Portugal), TJ-II (Spain), AUG (Germany) and JET (UK), where he regularly participates in experimental campaigns. His research methodology combines data analysis with diagnostic operation and development. He is co-author of about 120 publications in international scientific journals with referee, twenty two of them as first author (h factor of 23 with about 1200 citation in March 2014).

Luís O. Silva

Professor of Physics at IST. He obtained his degrees (Lic. 1992, PhD 1997 and Habilitation 2005) from IST, and was a post-doc at the University of California Los Angeles (1997-2001). His scientific contributions are focused in the interaction of intense beams of particles and lasers with plasmas, from a fundamental point of view and towards their applications for secondary sources for biology and medicine. He has authored more than 150 papers and 3 patents, was awarded an Advanced Grant from the ERC. His awards include the 2011 Science Prize of the Technical University of Lisbon, the IBM Scientific Prize 2003, the 2001 Abdus Salam ICTP Medal, and the Gulbenkian Prize for Young Researchers in 1994. He was elected Fellow of the APS and the Global Young Academy in 2009.
Personal website

Jorge Vieira

Assistant Researcher at IPFN. He was a visiting scholar at the University of California Los Angeles (2006 and 2008) and received his PhD in Physics from IST (2010). He was a post-doctoral fellow at IST (2010-12) and held a Humboldt Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich (2012-2013). He is specialized in plasma-based accelerators and compact radiation sources. His research interests include plasma-based acceleration, compact light sources, and intense laser and particle beam interactions with plasmas. He received Best Poster Prizes at the EPS meeting and at the Physics Summer School in St. Andrews (2005), and the Technical University of Lisbon/DelloiteYoung Researcher Prize in the category of Physics (2011).
Personal website

Marija Vranic

Marija Vranic is currently a Post-Doctoral researcher at IST. She had her PhD from IST under supervision of Luis O. Silva. After the PhD, she spent some time in ELI Beamlines, working on laser-matter interactions at extreme intensities. She obtained her MSc degree in physics at the University of Belgrade, under supervision of Prof. Zoran Lj. Petrovic. During the undergraduate studies, she has done an internship in the area of laser-matter interaction at Queen's University of Belfast, with Prof. Marco Borghesi. "My interest for physics was triggered at Petnica Science Center, a unique out-of-school learning facility where the students have an opportunity to do an independent scientific project, write a paper and even have their own interdisciplinary annual conference where they present their work. Here, one could hear about many "hot" topics of today's science, because most of the Serbian successful scientists around the world are Petnica alumni, and they are always happy to come back to talk about the science they are doing today. " Extra curricular activities: tennis and dancing.

Tiago Silva

Tiago Silva graduated in Engineering Physics (MSc) at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Portugal in 2011 and received his PhD degree (physics domain) from the University of Mons, Belgium in 2015.
Currently, he is a Junior Researcher at Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN), Lisbon, Portugal, in the area of Plasma Technologies and Lasers. He is part of the N - Plasmas Reactive: Modelling and Engineering group (also known as N-PRiME) where he works in the team of Modeling & Simulation. His research activities are closely connected with the modeling of non-equilibrium kinetics of low-temperature molecular plasmas applied to the conversion of greenhouse gases into valuable chemicals. Over the past years he has built a strong international collaborative networking on this topic with experimental groups in Paris, at École Polytechnique, and Eindhoven, at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Gareth Williams

Post-doctoral researcher at IPFN’s Group for Lasers and Plasmas. He obtained his doctorate in short pulse laser plasmas from the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2009. His current research interests include x-ray laser heated warm dense matter, high harmonic generation and application to ultrafast (atto-second) holographic imaging.